A Legal Name Change Puts 'None of the Above' On Canadian Ballot (foxnews.com) 171
PolygamousRanchKid writes: The ballot to fill a legislative seat in Canada next month includes none of the above—and it's a real person. Sheldon Bergson, 46, had his name legally changed to Above Znoneofthe and is now a candidate for the Ontario legislature, the CBC reports. The election is Feb. 11. The ballot lists candidates in alphabetical order by surname so his name will be the 10th of the 10 candidates as Znoneofthe Above, according to CBC. One of his opponents is running on the line of the None of The Above Party. Maybe the American folks can learn from their cousins up north? Shouldn't every election have a line for "None of the above"? I can't wait until Little Bobby Tables hits 35.
One word (Score:3)
Brilliant!
Re:One word (Score:4, Interesting)
"None of the above" is nice but doesn't really fix the problem of strategic voting. If we're going to change the ballot, I'd rather get rid of plurality voting altogether. Change it to a ranked, approval, or any of the numerous systems which are better than plurality.
My favorite site for explaining the problems and some of the potential solutions:
http://www.cgpgrey.com/politic... [cgpgrey.com]
Re:One word (Score:4, Insightful)
Change it to a ranked, approval, or any of the numerous systems which are better than plurality.
Plenty of countries use, or have used, these alternatives to plurality voting. There is little evidence that they lead to better government. In fact, there is little evidence that better reflection of the will of the people leads to better government. If you want to really reform the system, we should get rid of voting based on geography. Of all the issues I care about, almost none of them are specifically tied to the state I live in. Rather than a senator representing the people of California, it would be better to have one senator representing all the nerds, another representing all the construction workers, and yet another representing all the medicare recipients, etc. Each voter can then pick whomever best represents their views and interests, regardless of where they live.
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there is little evidence that better reflection of the will of the people leads to better government.
That's a pretty subjective thing to say. Arguably, the relative wealth of the western world may be due largely to its preference for democracy, which makes it harder for specific individuals or parties to wield too much power. What kind of evidence were you expecting?
No one is saying the people are effective leaders, but putting power in the hands of the stupid population is still way better giving it to the corrupt. Because of plurality voting, the people only have influence in one component (the principal
Re:One word (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to really reform the system, we should get rid of voting based on geography. Of all the issues I care about, almost none of them are specifically tied to the state I live in. Rather than a senator representing the people of California, it would be better to have one senator representing all the nerds, another representing all the construction workers, and yet another representing all the medicare recipients, etc. Each voter can then pick whomever best represents their views and interests, regardless of where they live.
I agree that representation based on geography is very flawed, but I'm not sure that form of interest-based representation is much better. There's no easy answers to how to get this, but what's actually needed is a system that encourages politicians to legislate and act based on the balanced interests of all the people, rather than the current system of pandering to whoever's politically convenient at the time at the cost of people who actually need the help more.
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A system based on vocation seems quite poor. There are far more important things than your job, at least to some people. Some people's political beliefs are so circumscribed, but it seems like theya re already assuming that politics should embody their philosophy with this setup.
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IIRC that was one of the major complaints the founding fathers had against the british legislature and why we have geographic representation.
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Indeed, there are different things to consider when electing a group of representatives instead of a position with a single seat.
A way to get what I think you are looking for is to actually change the system from election to appointment. You simply specify who you want to vote for you in the congress, and they will. That appointee gets one vote in congress for every person who appointed him/her, meaning that no longer do we have scenarios where 49% of the people don't get represented. And, there's no nee
Better government (Score:2)
Plenty of countries use, or have used, these alternatives to plurality voting. There is little evidence that they lead to better government. In fact, there is little evidence that better reflection of the will of the people leads to better government.
There's no evidence that it doesn't.
I'd be willing to bet that plurality countries have higher corruption scores compared with any other electoral system. It's pretty obvious that when only 2 parties can win, they will have both have tinkered with the system to benefit themselves, leaving one which benefits both.
You also get a more divided country, which makes people less open-minded. Democracy suffers again.
Rather than a senator representing the people of California, it would be better to have one senator representing all the nerds, another representing all the construction workers, and yet another representing all the medicare recipients, etc.
Size of the ballot paper would be huge and would be asking too much of voters too.
Plurality (Score:2)
Size of the ballot paper would be huge and would be asking too much of voters too.
Not really, I'd just read up some stuff, decide on a party, and vote for that party. That party has a list of people to be elected, and depending on how much of the vote they get, that's how many members are elected.
I'd sure like to have somebody in congress who matches me at around 90%, rather than the 60% I normally get as a *best* option.
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Yes, that would work better on a party basis, but you still need an electoral system which isn't massively biased towards two parties ie not plurality.
You'd really need 10+ parties for that to work.
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60%? That high? I'm lucky if I see someone from another state who matches my stances by even 25%, let alone my state which is stupendously conservative.
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I'm not being stupidly picky - 60% is 'has a position that I can live with'. I'm not one to argue much between whether something is 50k or 60k. I'm pro-choice, but view somebody that wants to ban 3rd trimester abortions outside of 'medical necessity' as okay, given that essentially 100% of 3rd trimester abortions are already medically necessary with a non-viable fetus because otherwise it's an 'emergency c-section', not an abortion.
Whether a tax is set to 25% or 26% isn't that big of a deal in most cases.
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Plenty of European countries do this and it results in a different set of problems. First, to vote for a party which matches your views such a party has to exist, what happens in practice is that parties which aim at large sections of the population form, because they have the greatest chance of election. Second having a parliament full of multiple parties means none of them usually has a clear majority and so you frequently get weak coalition governments. Third it's almost impossible to get rid of politicians because the established ones make sure they are high on the party lists, so they will get in no matter what. This takes away their connection to their constituency and their sense of responsibiity to their electorate.
Don't forget that you can end up with somebody winning who actually represents a small minority--that the majority of people could have easily agreed against, but because they failed on agreeing sufficiently on who else that person won anyway--and you can actually end up with greater polarization than in a two-party system since paradoxically the size of that 'large section of population' is smaller, especially if you indulge in salami tactics & generally aim to divide and conquer...which is a good way
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The problem tends to be one of education (Score:2)
I've had thoughts about government. One idea I had was to get rid of congress as a law passing body entirely. They're too tied into popularity contests, donations by extremist wealthy people, etc... They could still write laws or something.
Instead, let's go statistical. When a bill is proposed, you pull in around 500 random eligible citizens. Call them a 'specific representational congress' or something. Think of it like jury duty crossed with legislation, and be sure to pay them well so they aren't m
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It could be very difficult to keep the random 500 people from accepting bribes. It's actually a lot easier to monitor congressmen for corruption, at least they're around for 2+ years.
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It could be very difficult to keep the random 500 people from accepting bribes. It's actually a lot easier to monitor congressmen for corruption, at least they're around for 2+ years.
Treat them like jurors - their names are to be unknown, somewhat sequestered, and most 'trials' would only last a couple months, which would be tough to break the anonymity, find a corruptible juror that doesn't want the reward for reporting a bribe attempt, etc...
The problem with monitoring congressmen is that they're around long enough for 'corrupting' one to matter, and they're always in need of re-election money. Most of the time if you're engaging in bribery you're not bribing a random congressman, yo
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Or you could just hark back to Norse law, which was a predecessor of English law anyway, and its requirement that the lawmaking body's annual assembly start with every single law being read aloud, with any omissions resulting in the omitted part being not law for that year. Toss in a requirement that there be a quorum for the entire thing and to participate you need to be physically present for a significant percentage of it. (You could even ban all electronics aside from the camera and sound system from
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If you want to really reform the system, we should get rid of voting based on geography
It's not nearly as simple as that, or in fact any other silver-bullet solution. A lot of it depends on national proclivities. Look at two examples of countries that have had proper proportional representation for ages. Germany, stability and, well, Germanness. Italy, instability and, well, Italianness. Same system (with minor, mostly irrelevant differences details, and in both cases they've changed over time), opposite results.
Same with other countries. In Scandinavian countries you could apply just a
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There is little evidence that they lead to better government.
Get rid of winner take all and do proportional representation voting. There is plenty of evidence that it leads to more voices participating in government, which is what is best.
Of all the issues I care about, almost none of them are specifically tied to the state I live in.
Then there are probably a large number of issues that you should care about, but you are poorly informed on. The economic condition of the area and business you ar
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To give only representation to people or groups and not people in different geographies is called taxation without representation, since, then the geographies with low populations are not getting a vote comparable to the vote that larger communities get in the process.
Nonsense. It's people that are taxed, not geographies. Representation by land-mass is perhaps the least equitable way of voting on taxation. That just ensures that the more populous areas suffer from tax burdens far in excess of their representation.
(The most equitable arrangement, of course, would be proportional representation based on how much taxes the individual pays—counting as tax any loss of value due to restrictions imposed on the use of one's property.)
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That just ensures that the more populous areas suffer from tax burdens far in excess of their representation.
This is the most equitable, when all the federal tax money is being spent on things that only benefit the population located in the populous area.
most equitable arrangement, of course, would be proportional representation based on how much taxes the individual pays
No... they call that a plutocracy. A most equitable arrangement would be to divide the land mass into fine-grained administrativ
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To me the purpose of voting is not necessarily to reflect the will of the people, in most cases most people are not that aware of most the issues involved, anyway. Think about it, you base your vote on very little, If you are well informed, and not influenced by looks, or background, the best you can do base you opinions on speeches written by someone else, and advertisement done by some marketing company. Once you vote a politician in, they are free to break promises that they have made. Sure they may not
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A pure democracy wouldn't work well in any case other than very small systems of government. Especially in a modern society, there are simply too many issues before the Congress overall, let alone all the states, for the people as a whole to understand what they'd be voting on. (I'm aware that members of Congress often have not actually read the bills involved, but theoretically, they're a group that has the time to understand what's before them. What we're talking about here is largely theoretical anyway
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Only if you have a very narrow definition of democracy that does not include the democracies that actually exist. I know personal word redefinition is a thing that even made it to US academia but ultimately it is nothing other than a barrier to communication and a means of petty trickery even if it is especially popular in politics and talk radio.
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Rather than my usual novella...
Anyone advocating a strict, pure political ideology, as a solution is an idiot. A pure democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner. The tyranny of the masses is a serious threat and I'd expect that the stupidity of the masses would be far more terrifying. There is no pure political ideology without huge failings at a scale of meaningful size.
Fortunately, this is usually addressed in some way and, as you indicate, there are no pure democracies and the word ha
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A pure democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner.
Generally in nature the sheep (prey) out number the wolves (predators) by a large number. This a necessity since you need a large population of sheep to support a few wolves. This the same with society most people need to work and produce stuff, for criminals to succeed, you can't have a society where everyone steals from everyone else and makes nothing, there would be nothing to steal.
The problem with a pure democracy is that we have millions of uninformed sheep that simply follow, voting, it is not effici
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Democracy is democracy. The non-existent extreme democracy is something we'll never have to worry about since the "millions of uninformed sheep" don't just choose a single person so the
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Your complaints about the masses are also true for politicians.
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The real problem with any voting system is that you apparently want democracy to do something it can't do, and no voting system is going to fix that.
So, first state your criteria of "better", and then we can talk about whether we agree on t
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I did specify my criteria of "better", to reduce strategic voting. Strategic voting is when someone does not vote for his or her preferred candidate, but votes for a different candidate, because the outcome is more preferable. For example, if your preferred candidate is third party but you cast your vote for one of the first party candidates simply to ensure that the other does not win. Another example, if your preferred candidate is Rand Paul, but you vote for Ted Cruz instead because Rand Paul has litt
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So your criterion for a "better" voting system is minimizing strategic voting? What good is that?
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I suggest watching at least the first video in the link I originally posted: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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As I was saying: "The real problem with any voting system is that you apparently want democracy to do something it can't do, and no voting system is going to fix that."
You seem to be extraordinarily concerned with getting people into power that somehow "represent" the population. But there is no way of doing that. It isn't even a well-defined goal. And it is not the job of democracy to give t
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Honestly, most of your options don't lead to demonstrably better selections.
With an option to vote for "None of the Above", voters have a way to tell the various political entities "None of these assholes are acceptable. Try harder."
Then give the parties 45 days to find and prep another candidate (who can't be one of the rejects).
I can almost guarantee that we'll stop seeing these huge, clout-heavy, money-munching campaigns when said asshat candidates can be told "Oh that was cute. Now run along!"
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I'd love the option... I have wanted any candidate on a national election ballot in... Well pretty much since I first had the ability to vote. I didn't want Clinton, or Bush Jr, Obama, and I hate both party candidates right now for president. I'd love to be able to tell them what I think of them, but...
Sadly the only real means to change it relies on the body that is invested in the current system... So yeah... Never going to happen.
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How would that make any sense? The second place candidate can be VERY unpopular in a lopsided election.
If a universally popular Presidential candidate got 99.9% of the popular vote, and the second place candidate (a serial pedophile) got 0.1% of the vote (having cornered the pedophile vote, the anti-establishment vote, and the "unable to mark ballot correctly" vote), why should someone that less than 1 in 1000 voters wanted as President be one heartbeat away from becoming the President?
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That was essentially how the Constitution originally worked, albeit through electoral votes. However, it creates a great deal of uncertainty. An elected president gives people an idea of what to expect for the next four years, at least in terms of what will be attempted. The potentially complete change of policy should the vice president become president could undermine plans made based on those expectations.
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I do hope that someone has legal challenges set up in both directions to just jam the electoral system to try to force reform.
... Puts 'Znoneofthe Above' on Canadian Ballot (Score:3, Informative)
I'd love to see "None of the Above" (Score:5, Interesting)
What's more, if it won, the election should be rerun with none of the previous candidates allowed on the new ballot.
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That would be a terrible idea, and would discourage minor party and independent candidates even more than the current two-party scam.
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That would be a terrible idea, and would discourage minor party and independent candidates even more than the current two-party scam.
Why? If none of the previous candidates could run, the political parties involved would have to put forth completely new candidates. It's a reset. All of the money and campaigning done before wouldn't matter at all. Democracy needs an "All of these candidates were terrible" option rather than simply voting for the lesser of 2 or 3 evils that we have now.
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How many decades should the U.S. let the office of President remain unfilled even though there's a Presidential election every two weeks? Or, would the current President/Vice President just get to rule for decades even though everyone hates them (and they were disqualified from running again on the first ballot decades earlier because 'none of the above' won).
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Rather than have no new laws, you could have an automatic veto for all new laws, which is the most that the president could do if there was one. This would mean a 2/3 majority required for all new laws.
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Sounds like a good project for New Hampshire [freestateproject.org].
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What's more, if it won, the election should be rerun with none of the previous candidates allowed on the new ballot.
Sounds like a good way to create a democratic dictatorship.
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Nevada requires that None of the Above appear for all statewide offices--and this includes presidential electors.
hawk
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I've been maintaining this for a *long* time. My latest twist: a candidate who is in a sufficient number of races which go to None of the Above, is permanently disbarred from running for office.
The advantage of "NOTA winning reboots the race" is that it discourages negative campaigning. Negative campaigning currently works because, if voters believe it, they don't have much choice but to drop out of voting, or voting for the candidate using the negative campaign. Making NOTA a viable vote means that a c
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Little-known fact - In Canadian Federal politics, you can use a nickname that people know you by as your first name on the ballot.
I want every ballot to have a "none of the above" (Score:3)
Every ballot should have a "none of the above" option with special rules if "none" wins. If none wins then no one who ran is ever eligible to run again at this level of civic election and none of them are entitled to any rebates, refunds or other campaign support in anyway from the general public purse.
The purpose this none of the above option would be to make sure all candidates engage and encourage voters and don't waste our time.
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But ... but that would mean that they have to offer actual content and not just "if you vote for HIM $horrible_thing happens".
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There already is a "none of the above" option for the federal Canadian and provincial, at least in Ontario, elections. After they check your name off the register and go you hand you the ballot you decline (or abstain). This gets counted separately from ballots that are spoiled. I haven't looked up what happens if many people decline to vote because not many know about it so type spoil ballots or vote for the best of the worst. Or you get idiots pulling stunts like this.
I know that in my city you can al
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Declined ballots are counted in Canada, you can even request a count for declined from Elections Canada. In Federal elections all counts are done by hand, some provinces use a machine to quick scan the ballot but also do a hand count as well.
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Actually, you're confusing federal, provincial and municipal elections. in Canada, the three types of governments (federal, provincial and municipal) have their own election body with their own rules and timing.
Elections Canada runs the federal elections. For this, the
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When I really don't want to vote for any listed candidate (using paper absentee ballots), I overvote -- I just vote for everyone for that office. This prevents anyone from altering my ballot before it is counted so it appears I voted for a specific candidate. No, I'm not paranoid.
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In Canada putting a blank ballot in the box would be spoiling a ballot, same as marking it incorrectly or all of the candidates. When you decline to vote they put the ballot away separately and fill out a form stating that someone declined to vote. This way they know that exactly how many people declined to vote.
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Several countries allow you to deliver blank votes. These are counted, and are not the same as votes with errors.
The rules for write-ins and strike-outs also vary. If you're allowed to strike out every single person on the ballot, that counts as a vote for the party, but not for any of its candidates.
One of the problems with electronic voting is that it rarely allow for special cases like this, flagging intentional voting as an error, and the people at the polling station has no way of fixing it.
Dream come true (Score:2)
I'm an anarchist and I don't vote. I would vote if I could vote for "none of the above." I think every race should have the option of voting to leave the office vacant for a term so everybody can try it out and see if we like living without that elected official and the pain he or she inflicts on us.
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If the lack of somebody doing a particular job does not cause any harm, then the job is really a no-show job and should be eliminated--what kind of anarchist wants to keep a government job around that is clearly unnecessary?
That is my entire point. Let's try out not having a President for four years and see if everybody likes not getting into wars as much as I do. Maybe we'll just keep it that way.
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If the lack of somebody doing a particular job does not cause any harm, then the job is really a no-show job and should be eliminated--what kind of anarchist wants to keep a government job around that is clearly unnecessary?
That is my entire point. Let's try out not having a President for four years and see if everybody likes not getting into wars as much as I do. Maybe we'll just keep it that way.
A quick check confirms that if you want than what you want to do is get rid of Congress [wikipedia.org] and probably the rest of the world, too, just to ensure they don't decide to declare war on us. That has happened, and failing to declare war back doesn't make it not a war, though it probably will ensure that whatever soldiers survive being ill-prepared will be rather emphatic about ensuring no repeats.
I don't like government any more than you, probably, but it's generally considered a Good Idea to be prepared for the
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I have no clue why you are bringing up apathy and cynicism because it has nothing to do with what I believe and practice. Not voting is not the same as apathy. That's just one of the lies that the democracy meme tells to keep itself firmly infected in the population. Democracy inevitably leads to failures that are blamed on the apathetic just as communism inevitably leads to failures that are blamed on slackers and ruiners.
I absolutely believe in unanimous consent.
Hey! That guy stole my idea! (Score:2)
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Too late. That and variations on it have been tried in several countries -- so far with little success as far as changing outcomes is concerned.
Re:Hey! That guy stole my idea! (Score:4, Interesting)
Too late. That and variations on it have been tried in several countries -- so far with little success as far as changing outcomes is concerned.
From what I remember (and it may be urban legend as it has been a long while since I heard of it) some guy once registered a whole bunch of phone companies with names like "anyone", "the first one" etc. So that when people were wanting to be connected by the operator (this was way back when) and the operator asked them which long distance service to use the callers not caring who they were routed through replied with things like "anyone" etc so that their response matched one of these companies. The operator then duly connected them via the explicitly named company. The kicker was that it the back end he leased his service from the main players but charged a huge premium above what a regular long service would charge.
No, ballots shouldn't have "None of the above" (Score:2)
No, every election shouldn't have a line for "None of the above". If a voter doesn't like any of the candidates, he or she can still help society by voting for the lesser of two evils. (Or if there are n undesirable candidates on the ballot, by voting for the least of n evils.)
Does it suck when you have to hold your nose and vote for the lesser of two evils? Sure, but if you don't, you're more likely to get the greater of two evils. Which sucks even more.
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Too late. That and variations on it have been tried in several countries -- so far with little success as far as changing outcomes is concerned.
From what I remember (and it may be urban legend as it has been a long while since I heard of it) some guy once registered a whole bunch of phone companies with names like "anyone", "the first one" etc. So that when people were wanting to be connected by the operator (this was way back when) and the operator asked them which long distance service to use the callers not caring who they were routed through replied with things like "anyone" etc so that their response matched one of these companies. The operator then duly connected them via the explicitly named company. The kicker was that it the back end he leased his service from the main players but charged a huge premium above what a regular long service would charge.
I would not be surprised whatsoever if that were true. In Texas, we have an electricity market and can choose the company [powertochoose.org] that generates our electricity. When I lived in Connecticut, they had the same sort of market. Some of the companies are actual electricity producers (Reliant/NRG, Startex/Constellation/Exelon, etc) while some are just utilities on paper. The paper utilities range from active ones, who buy and sell electricity on the market minute by minute, to passive ones, who basically just resell
Why was this allowed? (Score:3)
As far as I understand, at common law you can go by whatever identity you like as long as it's not for fraudulent purposes. Legally changing your name, on the other hand, requires going in front of a judge and providing some justification. In particular, this change is done for the purpose of gaming the ballot and gaining an unfair advantage, and the judge shouldn't have allowed it.
Has Canada changed this tradition?
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this change is done for the purpose of gaming the ballot and gaining an unfair advantage
Gaming the ballot and gaining an unfair advantage?
Or making a political point, and exercising freedom of speech, and in particular making political speech?
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Gaming the ballot and gaining an unfair advantage.
If you think it's an exercise of freedom of speech then you've taken freedom of speech so much for granted that you don't remember what it really means.
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Changing his name to 'Jason Trudeau' would be gaming the ballot.
Znoneofthe, Above really is just making a political point.
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Canadian judges will do anything - legal or not, constitutional or not - if it benefits someone who claims they're a victim.
None of the Above not always an improvement (Score:2)
As much as people get frustrated with typical politicians I feel like "None of the Above" requests tend to be a bit vague.
For the US I think Obama fit this mold and turned out pretty well. On the other hand I think Republicans have been searching for "None of the Above" since 2010 and have gone well off the deep end searching for politicians who aren't politicians.
Up here in Canada I actually don't mind our selection of party leaders, the local MPs can sometimes be pretty nutty but the leaders tend to be re
Think of all the ages he could be! (Score:2)
Personally I can't wait until he's 36. Or what about when he turns 37?! Maybe even 63.
Nobody for President.... (Score:2)
I Remember the Frank Zappa Nobody for President campaign....
So it would be a silly idea to change my name to KissMyAss....
Not new. (Score:3)
A guy did this at a little local election near my workplace.
He was an idiot, but changed his name to None of the Above in protest.
Come election time, there was an option for "Of the Above, None". The idiot forgot to check how names were listed on the ballot. It was quite funny.
That was until the next month when the guy came to the school I was working for in the middle of the night and thought it funny to glue up all the locks, including the fire doors.
The reason I was originally aware of him was because he was canvassing parents leaving the school (and it was only a primary school) so vigorously that they made complaints. So he was asked to leave by a member of senior staff. There was a scuffle, and a child was injured. The police came, took him away.
Then he came back a few months later and gummed up all the locks in the middle of the night. The police came again, arrested him and charged him with trespass on a school property and criminal damage.
What do you want in a guy you vote for? Of the above, None.
'Reopen nominations' option (Score:2)
Distinguished Gentleman (Score:2)
Write-in candidate (Score:2)
I was going to change my name to Write-in Candidate.
New vistas (Score:2)
I'm moving to Canada, running for election, and changing my name to "Free Money".
Who wouldn't vote for free money? People seem to do so every election, I'm just giving them a shortcut.
Alphabetical? (Score:2)
Not the First Time (Score:2)
This isn't actually the first time someone has done this in Canada. I remember round about 20 years or so ago someone used a similar tactic in a federal election. In that case, he used two z's. I think it was in a riding in British Columbia that time.
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People being too stupid to read being allowed to vote might be outlawed shortly after.
I'd consider that a good thing.
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OK, you've sliced about 2% of the voting age population out of the voting pool. How much does this actually change things?
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You, sir, are an optimist.
as a matter of fact, (Score:2)
I was doing her sister, T. Otally Serious, but she wanted a commitment...
and I'm not going back to that madhouse!
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Yeah obviously that's where they got the idea. To be clear, its from the 1985 version. There are five versions of it, although I've only seen two of them.
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Yeah obviously that's where they got the idea. To be clear, its from the 1985 version. There are five versions of it, although I've only seen two of them.
Actually according to wikipedia the novel or play has been adapted into films ten times, three of which were produced in India. [wikipedia.org] Although if you go down the page to the film list [wikipedia.org] there are 11 listed.
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Thanks for a demonstration that what's 'obvious' isn't always true. I've never seen "Brewster's Millions", and independently came up with the "NOTA reboots the election" notion years ago. Perhaps disgust with politicians and political tactics is spread wide enough that the notion springs up in multiple people's heads?