On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 5:48 PM, Aadisht Khanna <[email protected]> wrote: > > You can still use Section 49-O of the Electoral rules to register a refusal > to vote though you will lose the anonymity of the old protest vote.
Paper ballots are not anon either as the presiding booth officer registers the voter details which is already available to the political party (independents included) workers. Funnily one party worker proudly told me they had better records of voters in their constituency than the recent census that was carried out in Bangalore. He was right but I digress. > But given that Indian elections are a circus, in any constituency there will > be no shortage of fringe candidates who you can give your protest vote to. > For all practical purposes, theirs' is protest candidacy so you may as well > provide them your protest vote. Not always. I dont want to give the protest vote to any fringe candidate either, who may be just a ploy to break-up the opponents thumping majority vote (knew one who lost the deposit but add 2-3 of them and they totally succeed in scattering some major votes). I strongly disapprove such tactics which I feel is a mockery of democracy (and a waste of my time and vote). Ofcourse, there may be many *good* independent candidates but frankly I'd rather elect a good (relatively subjective adjective but I live in hope :)) candidate from a party which has the majority mandate and power to make a difference and avoid future horse-trading and power struggles. Independent candidates have reduced power to bring in lasting change or policy matters and are only powerful when the government is about to fall via the No-Confidence motion. Not ideal. On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 6:15 PM, Pranesh Prakash <[email protected]> wrote: > I think that voting for the least of multiple evils is any day > preferable in the direct-election/first-past-the-post system we have > for Lok Sabha elections than casting a 49-O vote. As long as our > electoral system follows the FPTP principle, abstention votes don't > make sense. Abstention votes are different from a NOTA protest vote where a voter votes and chooses the option of rejecting all the candidates standing for elections with his/her "None Of The Above" option. My point is that I want to vote AND exercise my "NOTA" right which is an option the EVM does not provide currently. During the transition to the EVM, it was discussed but the political parties shot it down. With a paper ballots "invalid" vote, they could easily say "the voter didnt know s/he had to choose one candidate only" (a poor cousin to NOTA protest vote) but by actually providing a protest vote it gives true power to the voter. Hopefully it will send a strong message to existing parties to clean up their act and actually work for the citizens. A rule along the lines of " ... the constituency will have a re-election if 35% of total votes polled are NOTA" may mean parties would actually hear its people loud and clear. That is the goal. -- .
