Vote "None of the above."?

I had a thought today about elections. I thought, what if we installed a "None of the above." button on all election machines? And if the total for any candidate was not a clear 'majority', we had another go at it? Turns out I was not the first person with that idea. In Google image search for the term NOTA, there are hundreds of pictures - many involving a voting booth or a checkbox. I used a non-political one here. On further search, Wikipedia turned up the following:

None of the Above (NOTA) or 'against all options', is an option in some jurisdictions and organizations, designed to allow the voter to indicate disapproval of all of the candidates in a voting system. It is based on the principle that consent requires the ability to withhold consent in an election, just as they can by voting 'no' on ballot questions.

Entities that include "None of the Above" on ballots as standard procedure include Greece (λευκό), the U.S. state of Nevada, Ukraine (Проти всіх), Spain (voto en blanco), France (vote blanc), Colombia (voto en blanco), the United States Libertarian Party and the Green Party. Russia had such an option on its ballots (Против всех) until it was abolished in 2006.

At first it may seem a negative thought but consider the option that if no candidate had a majority that would signify a positive change for the people - to say they were unhappy with the system and wanted it changed - to be happier, hopefully. Now unfortunately, in the United States 2008 presidential election turnout was only 63%. However, in Australia, which has compulsory voting, and Malta, participation reaches 95%.

So there are two ideas to consider:

1) Institute a 'NONA' option into all national elections

2) Require mandatory voting 

This would make voting as required as filling out a tax return and mean that one's vote was as important as one's money. It would also provide a research method by which we could gauge how happy the people were with the way their money was being spent. I'm sure Larry Page could figure out an algorithm for that.

D a v i d E v e r i t t - C a r l s o n

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Squandering the Peace Dividend on War: The American Way

From Seth Godin today again, a post about squandering our national resources. You can read the original by clicking on the coloured type but I'm going to repurpose his writing a bit and make a few comments.

The internet means that many time-consuming forms of white-collar drudgery have disappeared, or at least been offloaded to cheaper people who aren't you, permitting you to spend more time on things that are actually productive and highly leveraged.

I recall any great number of people loosing their jobs when the computer age finally kicked in to corporate America in the early 90s. I felt sorry for them. At Leo Burnett in Chicago during a large layoff of 250 or so (15% of the staff I recall) a number of soon-to-be ex-employees were structuring a class action suit claiming the company was remiss in not retraining them properly. I'm not sure that ever got off the ground but they were not incorrect. All along they had been doing what they were told, doing what they had been trained to do, following the old company manual. And things turned out poorly for them. I recall crossing one of the bridges across the Chicago River at lunch one day and seeing the men in the fireboat fishing a body wrapped in plastic out of the water. "Must be one of ours", a fellow Burnetter remarked walking by. Signs of those times.

It's a little like the bump we got after the Cold War ended. The peace dividend was there, just waiting for us to repurpose our military, our military budget and our military research. We didn't. We squandered the window, wasted the money and didn't rush to fill it with the sort of top-down industrial projects (like high speed rail and efficient new forms of energy) that could have changed everything.

I spent nearly half of 2009 and half of last year in Europe. France, Germany and The Netherlands for a short bit. It was positively enlightening. High speed trains everywhere. A 12 Euro ticket for my public transportation every week. Metro, S-Bahn or a tram or bus anywhere I wanted to go in Munich. Fast and cheap. Bill Clinton left America a surplus in budget after his term. That seemed to go away fairly quickly. If I studied economics, politics and military science would I find that a state of perpetual war and code 'Red', 'Purple', 'Orange' fascist fear tactics in a nation  were essentially good for economic and political stability in the long term? I'd be interested in reader's thoughts on that.

D a v i d E v e r i t t - C a r l s o n

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Find me on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. Read my previous blog: The Wild Wild East Dailies.

In life, perception IS reality

From Seth Godin again today, the following illustration:

"Do you have an opinion about nuclear power? About the relative safety of one form of power over another? How did you come to this opinion? Here are the stats, and here's the image. A non-exaggerated but simple version of his data:

For every person killed by nuclear power generation, 4,000 die due to coal, adjusted for the same amount of power produced. You might very well have excellent reasons to argue for one form over another. Not the point of this post. The question is: did you know about this chart? 

This last week has seen a fair lambasting of the media over the nuclear non-meltdown in Japan. The sky was not falling - but it gave plenty of Americans cause to pound the stump for or against nuclear power. And how about Libya? America and France are now bombing against the regime. Do we really know what's going on? No, not at all. And don't expect the western media to go down there and start digging for the real story. Won't happen. Too many vested interests at stake. But we'll plunder away, at whatever our day jobs are. All that other stuff is far away. So we'll just continue making the reality we want to perceive, because we can. Reality is just terribly subjective. Perception is almost fact.

D a v i d E v e r i t t - C a r l s o n

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Find me on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. Read my blog: The Wild Wild East Dailies and keep up on our efforts with aSaigon/CreativeMorning.