[Back to Social Challenges: Politics]

Introduction

My petition to Parliament is now live: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/757966.  It closes on 18 November 2026.

The rules give you a strict word count, which is why I don't explain more of the reasons and address some of the more obvious objections in the text itself

Petition

In each parliamentary election, I want the Government to add 'None of the above' to the list of constituency candidates. If that gets most votes, then none of the candidates is elected and the election must be run again around 6 weeks later, but none of the candidates from that first vote will be allowed to stand in the re-run election.

At present, nobody is able to express their dissatisfaction about the candidates standing in an election in any clear and meaningful way. They can choose to not vote, but this can be interpreted as apathy. They can spoil their ballot, but this has no clear meaning. We believe this proposal, as well as potentially changing the election result, provides a unique measure of public dissatisfaction.

Comment

Every year, more voters are disengaging with the political process.  This is one of the major problems facing democracy, not just in the UK (see https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7501/),  but also across the globe (see https://www.idea.int/news/credibility-elections-under-threat-worldwide).  The global average percentage of the voting age population who vote declined from 65.2% in 2008 to 55.5% in 2023.

We don't know why.

There are other ways to improve voter engagement (see Electoral Reform), but this proposal is almost zero cost, and it delivers real world information about one aspect of the political process which is not only currently unavailable, but also would be both difficult and expensive to attempt to uncover any other way.

In the real world, I would be astonished if 'None of the above' ('NOTA') won more often than one in a thousand elections, probably far less. But it would give - for the first time ever - a real measure of voter dissatisfaction with the options presented to them, and that is something the political parties ought to be able to hear and respond to.

Why would NOTA win an election, in any realistic scenario?  In the UK, I can think of just two possibilities.  (Let me know if you think there is another plausible option!)

• One possibility is that two parties ('A' and 'B') make a 'non-compete' pact which a significant part of their members object to, so one party ('A') does not put up a candidate, and a significant number of their supporters refuse to vote for the candidate of party 'B', or any other party.  If NOTA wins in this situation, the message is clear: it means that party 'A's candidate would have won by a significant amount, and when the election runs again the only sane choice is to allow party 'A' to put up a candidate instead of party 'B'; the natural consequence is that party 'A's candidate will then be elected, which is exactly what the electorate in that constituency wanted.
• The other possibility is that the party which is expecting to win by a substantial majority chooses a candidate who is massively disliked by their supporters, who vote NOTA instead of voting for anyone else.  Again, the message is clear: supporters want to vote for their party but not that candidate, and the only sane option is for the party to choose a popular candidate when the election is run again; the natural consequence is that the popular candidate will win - again, exactly what the electorate in that constituency wanted.  There will be a popular candidate, because you only vote against your party's choice if you feel forced to and believe there is an obvious better choice available.

Background

NOTA is already used, to varying degrees, in numerous countries around the world.  It has not caused any of the problems that the opponents claim.  It rarely wins, but it has proved to be useful in in a few exceptional circumstances.

In the Soviet Union, a version of NOTA played an important role in the 1990 elections which led to the dissolution of the Union. Out of the 1500 seats, 200 were forced to hold new elections, and more than 100 Communist Party incumbents were defeated as a result. Boris Yeltsin later said that the "none of the above" option "helped convince the people they had real power even in a rigged election, and [it] played a role in building true democracy."

In Indonesia, only one candidate was offered to the people in the election for mayor of Makassar in 2018; NOTA won by 35,000 votes and the election had to be run again.

In the UK, the parliamentary Political and Constitutional Reform Select Committee ('PCRC') explicitly recommended in its final report on 'voter engagement', published in February 2015, that the next UK government should hold a public consultation before May 2016 solely on inclusion of NOTA on UK ballot papers. The Tory government scrapped the PCRC and ignored all its recommendations.

More information about NOTA can be found (where else?) in the Wikipedia article, 'None of the above'.

Objections

• If 'None of the Above' can force a whole election to be redone, you could get constant reruns, which would just create confusion, delay proper representation, and frustrate voters.
  
  How is this frustrating the voters, if this is what they voted for?  You only get a re-run if NOTA actually wins.  And you would only get constant re-runs if all the parties constantly choose candidates which the people reject.  Don't you think they might be motivated to choose candidates the voters would support?
  
  And if the political parties are all choosing candidates who are so bad that the majority of voters would prefer none of them, don't you think that is something we ought to know about?
   
• This provides no guarantee of a better or clearer electoral result.
  
  In one sense, this is not about producing a better electoral result.  'Better', in this context, is hard to define anyway.  What it does is enable you to measure for the first time the level of voter unhappiness with the selection of candidates they have been offered.  NOTA can only win if there is a high level of voter unhappiness with the candidates, and the parties are either ignorant or ignoring this.
  
  What actually happens is that, if the main parties all choose unpopular candidates, this opens the field for candidates from smaller parties and for 'Independents'.  The voters don't want another election, any more than the parties and candidates do, so they have a real incentive to find someone they are prepared to vote for.  If, despite all this, NOTA wins, then you know you have a real problem.  But, at least, now you know.
   
• It is possible that a candidate may get elected in the second election with less support than the best placed candidate in the first election, which would be an unfair result.
  
  Yes, it is possible - but it is not at all probable, and it would require the electorate to completely change their voting preferences between the two elections.  If something so significant happens in the few weeks between the two elections to make such a drastic impact, then the results of the second election is accurately reflecting the (revised) wishes of the electorate in a way the original election did not.  So, despite the appearance of an unfair result, it would actually produce the most accurate democratic result.
  
  In any voting system, it is always possible to create a possible scenario where the system produces an unfair or counter-intuitive result, because it is impossible to create a voting system which always delivers what we would like, however the support is distributed - this has been known since Arrow's Impossibility Theorem was proved in 1950; for more on the problems and solutions here, please see the Voting Systems article.  So the ability to create a possible counter-intuitive result, if it proves anything, proves that no voting system should be used.  Alternative suggestions on a postcard, please...

Finally

So - please support this petition!  Thank you.

You may also want to support the 38 Degrees campaign, UK Elections: Include 'None of the Above' on all ballot papers.

[Last updated 28 June 2026]