The Universe of Discourse

Mon, 05 Mar 2007

"Go ahead, throw your vote away!"
I noticed this back in November right afer the election, when I was reading the election returns in the newspaper. There were four candidates for the office of U.S. Senator in Nevada. One of these was Brendan Trainor, running for the Libertarian party.

Trainor received a total of 5,269 votes, or 0.90% of votes cast.

A fifth choice, "None of these candidates", was available. This choice received 8,232 votes, or 1.41%.

Another candidate, David Schumann, representing the Independent American Party, was also defeated by "None of these candidates".

(Complete official results.)

I'm not sure what conclusion to draw from this. I am normally sympathetic to the attempts of independent candidates and small parties to run for office, and I frequently vote for them. But when your candidate fails to beat out "None of the above", all I can think is that you must be doing something terribly wrong.

[ Addendum 20200723: Wikipedia's article on Nevada's “None of These Candidates” option ]

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