NOTA Versus Right to Reject

The proposal to introduce negative voting to reject all the candidates if voters found them unsuitable was first discussed by the Law Commission in its 170th Report in 1999, as part of its “alternative method of election”

Introducing NOTA guarantees the secrecy in casting a negative or neutral vote, increases public participation in the electoral process, which is fundamental to the “strength of democracy. NOTA would empower the people, thereby accelerating effective political participation, since people could abstain and register their discontent (with the low quality of candidates) without fear of reprisal; simultaneously, it would foster the purity of the election process by eventually compelling parties to field better candidates, thereby improving the current situation.

NOTA is not the same as the right to reject. This is because the stated reason for ECI’s demanding the introduction of NOTA was apparently to ensure the secrecy to the voter casting a negative vote and to prevent a bogus vote in their place; the right to reject did not figure in their original demands.

Good governance, which is purportedly the motivating factor behind the right to reject, can also be successfully achieved by implementing the already existing provisions on decriminalising politics and increasing political awareness; and introduce other provisions such as inner party transparency and election finance reform.

The preference of other alternatives to improve the quality of elected representatives instead of favouring the right to reject can be seen from the above comparative practices, which show that Colombia is one of the only countries that has right to reject provision. Most countries with NOTA-like provisions only count and declare the number of such votes, instead of factoring it in the final election results.