4 minutes reading time
The results are in, the crackers have been burst, the winners are busy measuring their new curtains, and the losers are busy brooding. And tucked away in the corner of the spreadsheet is a number that makes me want to weep for the state of human intelligence: 550,000.
Five and a half lakh people in Tamil Nadu walked into a booth on 16th May and decided to be “ultra-smart.”
They looked at the choices, adjusted their spectacles, sighed with the weight of their own superior morality, and pressed the NOTA button. They walked out with that little ink stain on their finger, feeling like they’d just delivered a devastating blow to the political establishment. They probably went home and wrote a status about “refusing to choose between two evils” and “registering a protest.”
I have a word for those people. It’s not "smart." It’s "accomplices."
Let us look at the mathematics of your “protest,” you intellectual giants.
In a first-past-the-post system, there is no such thing as a non-vote. If you don't pick a winner, you are simply handing your share of the decision to the person who did.
Imagine a village with a hundred people and a burning house. There are two buckets. One is filled with dirty water, and the other is filled with slightly dirtier water. A man stands there and says, “I refuse to use either bucket because neither meets my standards of purity. I shall stand here in a dignified manner and watch the house turn to ash.”
That is NOTA. You aren't “sending a message” to the politicians. The politicians don't care about your message. They only care about the headcount. If 99% of a constituency votes NOTA and one person votes for a candidate, that candidate goes to the Assembly. Your righteous finger did a lot of cardio, but the seat didn't move an inch.
The 5.5 lakh people who chose NOTA in Tamil Nadu didn't "reject" the system. They just let everyone else decide their future for them.
I’ve been reading the rants of these NOTA worshippers. They think they are the vanguard of a new revolution. They think if NOTA gets enough votes, the Election Commission will magically cancel the election and find 234 saints to run for office instead.
It’s a fantasy. It’s a fairy tale for people who can't handle the messy, grimy reality of compromise.
There is no "None of the Above" in real life. If you don't choose your master, your master will choose you. In 2016, with the margins we saw in several seats, those NOTA votes could have actually changed the outcome. They could have been used for harm reduction. They could have been used to pick the least dangerous bastard in the room.
Instead, they were used to buy a feeling of moral superiority that will last exactly as long as it takes for the next tax hike or the next bridge collapse to hit.
The most irritating thing about the NOTA voter is the smugness. The idea that by doing nothing, they have done something better than everyone else.
It is a coward’s high ground. It is the ability to complain about the government for the next five years while saying, “Don't blame me, I didn't vote for them.”
Well, I do blame you. I blame you more than the person who voted for the winner. At least the person who voted for the winner was trying to affect the world. They were making a choice in a world of limited options. You? You decided the world wasn't good enough for your vote, so you threw it in the trash and expected us to applaud your discernment.
We don't need discernment. We need results.
If you think all the candidates are garbage, then run yourself. Or find someone who isn't garbage and fund them. Or pick the one who is 40% garbage over the one who is 90% garbage. That is what being a citizen in a broken democracy looks like.
But don't walk into a booth and press a button that was designed as a pressure valve to keep you quiet, and then tell me you’ve made an "ultra-smart choice."
You haven't made a choice. You’ve just made it easier for the bastards to win.
I’m going to go find a bucket of dirty water. At least it puts out fires.
wtf!!!!!!!!!!!!!? NOTA 5,61,244 (1.3%) !!!!!!!!!!!!!1??????????????