Hi all, just thought I’d check in with some thoughts. I’m going to go ahead and assume that most people reading this on our site and profiles will recognise a) the total absence of any meaningful true democracy in the UK, b) the urgent need to do something about that and c) how crucial inclusion of NOTA on ballot papers will be to any kind of fightback.
The primary barrier to building this movement has always been mass awareness of how central NOTA is to the concept of democracy, and this basically comes down to funding. NOTA UK has built the current awareness, and achieved the things we have over the years (see here: www.notauk.org), with virtually no funding and in our very limited spare time – all involved should be very proud of that.
But if we want to break through that barrier and go to the next level, we will need proper funding and a full time committed team. The problem then becomes keeping it truly independent and free of outside agendas. History shows us that this is usually far from straightforward.
Basically, as things rapidly go from bad to worse in our faux-democracy, I’m extremely open to working with anyone who is qualified and equipped to help us secure the resources and personnel we need to take this forward, while necessarily remaining fiercely independent of outside ideological or anti-democratic agendas. Email is stan(at)nota-uk.org
I started NOTA UK ten years ago because it was clear to me then that a system that offers up two indistinguishable political parties of establishment power, and nothing else, is plainly undemocratic and not fit for purpose in a world of clearly ineffective and failing systems of governance – failures that have real world, often devastating implications for many millions of people.
A lot has happened in UK and world politics since then. Plenty of reasons for true democrats to be hopeful and despairing in equal measure.
But I think it’s fair to say that now, fully immersed in the shit show that is 2020, we have officially come full circle.
This is not democracy. It’s perception management. It’s propaganda dressed up as discourse. It’s the drip feed normalisation of lying, cheating and bullying as a way of life. It’s the elevation of the values and agendas of a small minority of hugely privileged and powerful people over and above the day to day needs of millions of ordinary citizens, all living at the sharp end of the massively unstable and unsustainable world that these people have created. Enough is enough. A serious and prolonged fight back is long overdue.
At the VERY LEAST we need to be able to reject all that this plainly rigged and utterly corrupted system has to offer at the ballot box in a formal and binding way. That’s what ‘None of the Above’ represents (read all about why this simple reform is so important here).
But more than that. We need to take on and dismantle any and all anti-democratic forces that hold humanity back wherever they exist.
Democracy is impossible all the while our elected representatives can twist, distort and outright lie with impunity. It should literally be impossible to do that in any truly democratic system.
Democracy is impossible all the while bought and owned media can twist, distort and outright lie with impunity. It should literally be impossible to do that in any truly democratic system.
Democracy is impossible all the while powerful vested interests can control elected representatives and manipulate people’s perception of reality to the point where they believe in pure fiction and are willing to vote against their own interests year in, year out. It should literally be impossible to do that in any truly democratic system.
So – as much as I continue to believe in the democratising power of a formal and binding NOTA option on ballot papers as the start point for reforming any and all electoral systems, I hereby propose to expand this campaign to encompass all that is plainly wrong with the sorry state of affairs that passes for democracy in the UK and the wider world.
KEY ISSUES:
REFORM OF PARLIAMENTARY STANDARDS – provable outright deception by elected representatives should be 100% illegal and punishable in the harshest terms.
MEDIA REFORM – provable outright deception by supposedly independent media entities should be 100% illegal and punishable in the harshest terms.
LOBBYING REFORM – attempting to exert influence on government policy for purely selfish gain should be 100% illegal and punishable in the harshest terms.
Seriously, this is basic stuff. Why do we put up with it? Why do any of us go along with the pantomime lie of periodic elections between awful and ever so slightly less awful establishment puppets/muppets?
IT’S RIDICULOUS.
Get involved. You can find out more and support our campaign for formal, binding NOTA in the UK by following the links below and signing our petition:
Today I was invited on to Matt Chorley’s ‘Politics Without the Boring Bits’ show on Times Radio. Hit play below to hear the segment, the whole show can be found here: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/radio/show/20240422-28215/2024-04-22 (video hopefully coming soon)
There’s a myriad of reasons why it must be possible in a true democracy to formally reject all that’s on offer at an election in a way that can affect the outcome if enough people do so.
But the refusal – and/or inability – of an entire country’s political system to even try to stop a blatant ‘plausible’ genocide is surely the most extreme example imaginable.
And that’s exactly where we are in 2024.
In all my nearly fifteen years of advocating for a formal and binding None of the Above option on ballot papers, I’ve always been very careful to ensure that this advocacy is politically neutral, as NOTA is, by definition, politically neutral.
But this issue isn’t about politics, or left and right. This is about right and wrong.
Rafah is the supposed ‘safe’ city in southern Gaza that has become home to 1.5 million civilians, most of whom have been displaced by Israel’s six month campaign of bombing in the Gaza strip.
This giant refugee camp, that has now also been deliberately starved and bombed from the air by Israel for weeks, is now reportedly being quietly subjected to a brutal ground invasion also, against the advice of even Israel’s staunchest allies.
Make no mistake – this is a blatant genocide that the political systems of the US, UK and all NATO countries are currently openly facilitating by, at best, refusing to oppose it or, at worst, actively supporting it with weapons and logistics.
And yet these enablers of genocide all still want you to vote for them at their respective upcoming elections…
As things stand, if you vote for any UK party or candidate that isn’t explicitly calling for an immediate end to this genocide, you will effectively be endorsing it.
But in the UK, if you don’t vote (assumed apathy), or spoil your ballot in protest (lumped in with those spoiled in error), it makes no difference.
Regardless of low turnout or number of spoiled ballots, the party with most votes per constituency, and most parliamentary seats nationally, wins. As if they have a real mandate and the backing of most of the country, even if they don’t.
That’s outrageous at the best of times. In the current climate, it’s something else. It’s actually incredibly dangerous.
In my humble opinion, as a pro-democracy campaigner of old, if we tolerate this our children will be next. And it is beholden on all who recognise the terrible wrongness of the current paradigm to fight for a better world.
With the farce of another general election looming in 2024, we will of course be looking to put our campaign for actual democracy and meaningful electoral reform on more people’s radar in the coming months. NOTA is neutral by definition. So our campaigning has to be also. True neutrality and independence means that we have no sponsorship and zero formal funding. Everything we do, we do in our spare time and using our own resources.
But that model is becoming less and less sustainable in 21st (18th?) Century Britain with the sky-rocketing cost of living. This week, I’ve literally had to divert funds from supporting my family to renewing our website domain to keep the site and it’s wealth of NOTA info alive. That’s not sustainable.
The only way this campaign and movement can survive is if YOU the supporters of actual democracy and meaningful electoral reform want it to. Sharing our social media and website posts helps a lot, especially our definitive white paper.
We’re very pleased to announce that NOTA UK have been invited to make a presentation on the urgent need for inclusion of a formal and binding NOTA/VETO option on ballot papers for all UK elections at the Electoral Reform Society’s next AGM in Cardiff on 3rd December 2022.
Myself and active NOTA UK supporter Rohin Vadera will be making the presentation online then taking part in a brief debate about the benefits of this essential democratic pre-requisite.
We intend to use this opportunity to highlight why, in our view, campaigning for a formal and binding NOTA/VETO option should be the number one priority for all genuine democrats, not only as a necessary reform in and of itself, but also as a logical first stepping stone towards the society’s objective of replacing First Past The Post with a form of Proportional Representation.
Obviously, the more pro-NOTA voices we have at this event the better. This is a real opportunity to make our case and perhaps influence the future direction of arguably the most significant UK electoral reform group.
We encourage all NOTA supporters to register to attend the AGM online or in person before this Friday 2nd December (please note, in order to attend you will need to join the ERS, at least temporarily, membership is by donation starting at £2 per month). Click here to register: https://www.mi-nomination.com/electoralreformsociety
If you’ve not done so already, please do also sign our petition and follow us on social media (links below).
I recently applied to be in the audience of an upcoming November recording of Question Time in my home town. I have yet to hear anything back. I also put myself forward to appear on the panel of that show in my capacity as the founder of electoral reform group NOTA UK.
We have been campaigning for a formal and binding ‘None of the Above’ (NOTA) option to be added to ballot papers for all UK elections since 2010. I have appeared on BBC Radio 4 show ‘PM’ (2013), 5 Live’s ‘Ballot Box Brigade’ (2015), Matthew Wright’s ‘The Wright Stuff’ on Channel 5 (2017) and also on his Talk radio show (2019) as well as making a number of other media appearances over the years.
In 2014, we successfully lobbied the parliamentary Political & Constitutional Reform Committee (PCRC) to include NOTA as a proposed reform in a survey and public consultation on ‘voter engagement’. The huge show of public support for NOTA that this provoked compelled the PCRC to recommend in it’s final report (published 05/02/15) that the next government hold a public consultation before May 2016 specifically on inclusion of NOTA on ballot papers.
Instead, the incoming Conservative government promptly scrapped the PCRC and tore up all of it’s recommendations.
You are coming to my home town in November. At a time when the country will undoubtedly still be reeling from the utter chaos of the last few weeks (and years) while coming to terms with either yet another unelected (or previously ousted!) Tory prime minister or the grim prospect of yet another general election in which only two parties, both representing the establishment class first and foremost, can ever wield any power.
That is the exact same paradigm that got us in to this mess in the first place. Despite all the chaos of Brexit, Covid and the very public implosions of both the Labour and Tory parties, nothing has fundamentally changed about the undemocratic system that somehow passes for democracy in the UK since we launched our campaign in 2010.
Enough is enough. People are angry. Really angry. There are millions of disenfranchised, unrepresented people up and down the country who aren’t going to take this any more. Of all the possible ways that those people’s feelings could be expressed, supporting our campaign for formal and binding NOTA on ballot papers is by far the most benign, peaceful and ultimately transformative.
Clearly then, the time has come for our non-partisan, neutral campaign for real electoral and democratic reform to finally get the respect and coverage it deserves. With that in mind, I again formally request that you invite NOTA UK to the table this November.
For reference, our extensive white paper explains in detail what we are campaigning for and why.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Yours sincerely, Jamie Stanley Founder of NOTA UK 20/10/2022
Raaaaannnntttt…… STOP CALLING IT TORY CORRUPTION!!!
It’s not – it’s ESTABLISHMENT corruption.
The 3rd November 2021 ‘Parliamentary Standards’ vote – a Tory government attempt to remove provisions to meaningfully punish ANY MP’s caught blatantly abusing their positions of power – was won by a mere 18 votes.
Here’s a list of MP’s that either abstained or were absent for the vote.
It includes 27 Labour MP’s, 13 SNP MP’s and, notably, 97 Tories (13 Tories also rebelled and voted against).
In other words, with no ‘opposition’ abstention or absences, the vote would have gone the other way. There’s no way that all of those MP’s were ill or otherwise unable to attend such a serious and controversial vote.
Clearly, it’s not just the Tories that benefit from this far reaching vote that Boris Johnson had the brass neck to push through. It’s the utterly corrupt, establishment shielding UK political system as a whole. Absolutely all of the main parties know this and are quietly fine with it, even if it doesn’t sit well with individual MP’s beliefs and consciences.
Everything else – especially establishment PM in waiting Keir Starmer’s latent faux-disgust (who was absent for the vote, ill apparently) – is just theatre.
All of which, in the long run, is really just about manufacturing consent from a majority of the electorate to be governed by the next viper’s nest of millionaire establishment sociopaths posing as men and women of the people – while we all dutifully pretend we don’t live in a completely doomed corporatist plutocracy.
KILL IT WITH FIRE!!! *
* Or, at the very least, acknowledge the total absence of meaningful democracy in the UK and try to understand what it would take to establish one. HINT: www.notauk.org UPDATE: And after all that, the government was forced to ignore the vote and scrap their plans anyway…. what a farce!
Whenever elections are looming, well meaning supporters of the struggle for actual democracy will often declare their intention to spoil their ballots in protest at a perceived lack of choice or the electoral system in general. There are even campaigns designed to encourage all disenfranchised voters to do so.
In this blog, I’m going to set out why, contrary to many people’s beliefs, the act of ballot spoiling could never deliver any kind of meaningful progress or change and why campaigning for a formal and binding ‘None of the Above’ (NOTA) option on ballot papers should be the priority of all true democrats and reformists.
MYTH #1: Ballot spoiling is a form of NOTA.
A common misconception about ballot spoiling is that because spoilt ballots all have to be accounted for, it is in essence a form of NOTA. This is false.
In order to be effective, a rejection of all candidates must be formal and binding. In order for that to be the case, the act must be acknowledged as a rejection in the first place.
But in the UK and most other countries, no matter what people write on their ballot papers in protest, they are NEVER counted as protest votes or rejections and are ALWAYS lumped in with those spoilt in error.
MYTH #2: If we all did it, things would change.
Another misconception about ballot spoiling is that if enough people did this, it would have to be taken seriously and recognised as a widespread rejection leading to democratic reform. This is also false, due to the way in which spoilt ballots are counted.
There are four ways in which a spoilt ballot can be formally labelled:
absence of official mark [polling station stamp]
voting for more than one candidate
writing or mark by which the voter could be identified
unmarked or void for uncertainty
What this means, is that there is no such thing as a protest vote or rejection of all candidates as far as the counts and Electoral Commission are concerned. No matter what you do, your spoilt ballot will always be classified in one of these four ways.
In other words, your attempted formal rejection will always be lumped in with ballots spoilt in error, no matter what you do. No distinction is made.
Now, of course, if 50% of the electorate were to spoil their ballots in protest, the notion that they were all spoilt in error would become ridiculous. But even then, with no formal distinction being made, with no way of officially separating deliberate rejections from ballots spoilt in error, there’d be no legal basis from which to act or push for change. It could therefore easily be propagandised against as a one off campaign of targetted election wrecking, an attempt to undermine democracy in action.
MYTH #3: If we all make our intention clear (by writing in ‘NONE’ or None of the Above’), things would change.
Finally, there is a misconception that if we all spoil our ballots in ‘the right way’ and make it crystal clear what we are trying to do, the counts won’t be able to dismiss them as ‘void for uncertainty’ and will have to record them as deliberate rejections. This is an idea promoted by the well meaning ‘Vote or Vote None’ campaign.
The reason this is false is that as far as the counts and Electoral Commission are concerned, the only intention that could possibly exist in relation to a ballot paper is the intention to endorse one or other candidate. The intention to reject all candidates doesn’t exist for them. For this reason, the official advice for those counting ballots is to label any attempt to register a formal rejection as ‘voter intention unclear’ and put them in the ‘unmarked or void for uncertainty’ category.
For this reason, in order for the aims of the ‘Vote or Vote None’ campaign to be realised, they would first have to lobby the Electoral Commission for the inclusion of a fifth category of spoilt ballot: rejection / protest vote.
But if you were going to do that, why not campaign for inclusion of a formal and binding NOTA option on ballot papers in the first place? Because even if such a distinction between ballots spoilt in error and those spoilt in protest existed, you’d still be asking people to spell out their intentions while also relying on count staff to correctly label each rejection. A formal and binding NOTA option would do all of this instantaneously.
In conclusion, by all means spoil your ballot if it makes you feel better. But please understand that it is, and always will be, a symbolic empty gesture only. Ticking a formal and binding NOTA option on a ballot paper is the ONLY way to effectively withhold consent and reject all that is on offer at an election. The right to be able to do this is a central pillar of democracy itself, currently denied to all citizens of the UK and many millions of people around the world.
Read our white paper to find out why this one achievable, seemingly small systemic change could usher in an era of real democracy that maximises the common good. Sign our petition, share our posts, spread the word. Onwards.
For approximately the last million years (it seems like it), I’ve been banging on to anyone who will listen about how actual bonafide democracy requires three things: 1: Formal & binding NOTA on ballot papers
2: A proportional voting system
3: Lying in public office & in the media to be illegal and punishable in the harshest terms.
The absence of these three pillars make democracy completely impossible. For this reason, the idea that the UK is one is laughable. One need only look at the litany of corruption engulfing the current administration and the apparent inability of any of us, or any official body, to do anything about it to understand this.
I therefore wholeheartedly welcome the current push to introduce rules to make it harder for politicians to lie with total impunity and commend the efforts of tireless campaigner Peter Stefanovic to help bring this about.
Sadly, however, I suspect that nothing will come of it and that whatever changes occur will be cosmetic only and easily circumvented. While calls for PR will no doubt continue to be kicked down the road endlessly by the only two horses that are really ever in the race as things stand.
NOTA remains the logical starting point for full democratisation of failing faux-democracies like the UK because:
1: It cannot be argued against without arguing against the concept democracy itself, once properly understood (it would therefore be achievable with enough widespread understanding of this fact) and
2: It’s very existence on ballot papers would make further real and lasting reform that much more possible – without it it’s hard to see how or why that would ever happen.
All power to everyone working towards the goal of full democratisation of the UK and wider world at this time. If only you could all see what a pivotal systemic leverage point NOTA represents and fully get behind our campaign… then, and only then, might we actually stand a chance of turning this undemocratic and increasingly fascistic global paradigm shift around.
Here’s hoping.
Read our white paper here to find out why we believe NOTA should be the priority of all democratic reformists.
Jamie Stanley NOTA UK 29/04/2021
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