STEVE SEBELIUS: None can’t win, but it can spoil
As President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden fight for every vote in Nevada — a state known for very close presidential elections — somebody who’s not even on the ballot could have an impact on the race.
Well, maybe not somebody. More like, some thing.
Meet None of These Candidates, who goes by the nickname NOTC.
Unique among the states, Nevada offers its voters a choice in statewide elections: vote none. The ballot option — created in the reform-minded days following the Watergate scandal — was instituted to allow voters to express their displeasure with every human being on the ballot, while still casting a vote.
Unfortunately for NOTC, it cannot win because it’s a nonbinding choice. The highest human vote-getter is awarded the election, even if NOTC collects the most support.
Don’t laugh, it’s happened: In the Democratic primary of 2014, the party failed to field a big-name candidate to run against incumbent Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval, whose popularity made any challenge a suicide mission. Instead, a former official from the late Gov. Mike O’Callaghan’s administration, Bob Goodman, volunteered for the job.
I reasoned at the time that if the Democratic Party wasn’t going to give Nevada Democrats a candidate, it should return the favor and nominate nobody, in the form of NOTC.
Sure enough, NOTC won the primary, with 30 percent of the vote in an eight-person race. Goodman went on to lose to Sandoval in the general, 70 percent to 24 percent, although NOTC earned nearly 3 percent of the vote and beat the Independent American Party candidate in the general.
In presidential races, NOTC generally doesn’t do well, although it’s been known to beat some minor-party candidates. On average, between 1996 and 2016, NOTC has earned about 0.99 percent of the general-election vote. The exceptions are notable: In 1996, with Ross Perot on the ballot, Bill Clinton managed to eke out a victory with 43.9 percent over Republican Sen. Bob Dole. Perot took 9 percent, but NOTC got 1.2 percent.
After that, NOTC remained between 0.44 percent and 0.65 percent until the crazy election of 2016. For the first time in 20 years, NOTC more than doubled its average, winning 2.56 percent of the vote — or 28,863 actual votes, more than the previous 20 years combined. Hillary Clinton won the race — barely — with 49.88 percent.
The lesson? In a race with plenty of options (Democrat, Republican, Ross Perot) or two options whom voters found relatively unpalatable (Clinton, Trump) NOTC does better, much to the chagrin of those human candidates. After all, if NOTC was banned from the ballot, those votes would most likely go to a human candidate.
That may be why Republicans in 2012 sued Nevada to remove NOTC from the ballot, fearing in a typical close Nevada election that GOP presidential nominee Gov. Mitt Romney needed every vote he could get. The Republican legal team convinced a credulous federal judge to strike NOTC from the ballot, but the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the ruling (after first having to order the judge to enter his judgment and stop running out the clock as the ballot-printing deadline drew near). An appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court was turned away.
In the end, NOTC won 0.57 percent of the vote, and Romney lost to Barack Obama.
Some have called for NOTC to be repealed because it’s nonbinding. Critics have called it an anachronism or a meaningless way to throw away one’s vote. But I’ve disagreed with that idea: The only discarded vote is the one that’s not cast. While NOTC isn’t ever going to win, it does express a preference, one that rejects all the available choices in favor of something else.
What would really make NOTC fun is if it were binding: If NOTC won any race, a new election would be held with one caveat: No one who lost to NOTC in the first election could be on the ballot for the do-over. It’s doubtful any human who regularly appears on a ballot would agree to such a regime, however.
In the meantime, Nevada voters still have NOTC as an option if they find Trump, Biden, Libertarian Jo Jorgensen and Independent American Party nominee Don Blankenship wanting. Will NOTC break its usual 1 percent this time? We’ll know in a little more than a week.
Contact Steve Sebelius at SSebelius@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0253. Follow @SteveSebelius on Twitter.