RIGHT TO REJECT - MAKING DEMOCRACY MORE PARTICIPATIVE
By Ruma Dubey
The Indian voter has something which even Facebook does not have – the option to ‘Dislike’. Yes, the Indian voter can now go for negative voting, rejecting all the candidates. In a landmark decision, the Supreme Court has directed Election Commission to have a NOTA button – none of the above option, which means if unhappy with the candidates in your constituency, you can go, press a button and reject all of them.
In an ideal world this is a very good deal. We are giving our voters a right to reject, not just elect. Yes, it is the best way to clean the system of the bad politicians, meaning more than 75% of them should ideally get rejected. But our country is notorious for misusing every single law thus the danger of this too getting twisted to benefit the undeserving is a real risk.
Here, the danger of misuse is huge. First and foremost, we still do not know what happens when NOTA exceeds all other votes? There is no word yet about whether fresh elections will be held if the majority vote to reject. And by majority do we mean more than 50% of the electorate or more than 50% of the voting poll? It has to be more than 50% of the electorate but even then, we do not yet know if that will call for a re-election. Or does is merely mean that the candidate with the second highest votes, after NOTA, gets elected ? If that is how it works, then the entire purpose of NOTA gets defeated. If majority people vote for NOTA, there has to be re-election. And does it also mean that in the event of re-election, the earlier candidates get barred from contesting? This is most crucial insight which we require or else our politicians will continue to field the same criminal candidates from different constituency.
In terms of misuse, none to beat the brains of our politicians. If in a particular constituency, all the 9 candidates know that the 10th candidate is a sure shot winner, they could form a cartel and get “its” people to go for NOTA and get the able candidate voted out. So in terms of using this right, there is a very high probability that the very politicians could use this NOTA to their advantage.
The SC wants this to be implemented in the coming assembly elections in states of Delhi, MP, Rajasthan, Chhatisgarh and Mizoram. This is scheduled for November and if this can indeed be tested now before the 2014 elections, we all will get a fair idea of how this actually works.
There is also the big question of how many times will re-election be allowed? If voters keep on rejecting the candidates, what happens then? And when NOTA gets majority, in how much time will there be re-polling? Do we have so many good candidates right now? Or is this the pain which we will have to go through to clean all the muck? There are countries where NOTA is used but once used and there is re-election, the NOTA button is removed to reach some conclusion. Will we have the same process?
We already have the Rule 49(0) which very few people know of – you do not want to vote for any candidate, you need to approach the polling agent and he will ask you to sign a register. Here, you only get to sign in your protest, this rejection is not counted. More importantly, this rule flagrantly violates the principle of secret ballot. But under NOTA, even your rejection will get counted – that is the biggest game changer and your secrecy is also maintained.
Right now, things are a bit fuzzy but there is no doubt that this is an extremely bold move. It is a great tool to filter out unworthy candidates and it might get more voter participation – people disenchanted with the candidates instead of refraining from voting can at least lodge their displeasure through NOTA. Thus we might see better participation of the electorate in the poll process. This in turn could cut down impersonating votes and booth-capturing.
Yes, if we have the right to elect, we should also have the right to reject. If Parliament can have a vote of no-confidence, why not a similar right for we the people?