Rep. Peter Hoekstra, a Michigan Republican, is a cheerful 42-year-old from one of the few places in this happy Republic where gloom is indigenous. Actually, he is from Holland, from whence he emigrated at age 3, landing, so to speak, on Lake Michigan's eastern shore. His western Michigan district, which includes a city called Holland, is planted thick with tulips and Calvinists of Dutch descent who are gifted at the nuances of theological guilt. (Novelist Peter De Vries, who graduated from Calvin College in Grand Rapids, wrote about Calvinists who felt sinful for not feeling sinful. One child, noting that other pupils were praised for confessing guilt, concocted false confessions, then remorsefully prayed, "Lord forgive me, a pseudo-sinner.")
Anyway, the high-spirited Hoekstra has an idea. It is unsound but probably would be enchanting to most Americans who, if they heard of it, would think it an idea whose time has come. In fact, they would think its time comes with metronomic regularity, every two years. His idea is a bill called the Federal None of the Above Act.It says that in federal elections there shall be on the ballots, after the names of the candidates, a line reading, "None of the Above." If "None of the Above" received the most votes, a new election would be held not less than 20 days and not more than 30 days after the results of the first election are certified. Hoekstra lacks Calvinist rigor: The rejected candidates would not be ineligible for the next election.
NOTA is part of Hoekstra's package of reforms that he calls the "Voters' Bill of Rights." They include the right to produce by petition a recall election for a senator or congressman; the right to produce by petition an "advisory initiative" whereby participating voters would express to Congress their nonbinding opinion about this or that item of public business; and the right to bind Congress by an initiative process.
The right of recall is inimical to the practice of deliberation, which is supposed to be the specialty of senators, who because of their six-year terms are more insulated from electoral temptations, and hence from the gusts and eddies of opinion, than are members of the turbulent House. Recall also is unnecessary regarding representatives because their terms are so short: if a representative does something intolerably obnoxious to a voting majority of his or her constituency, surely it is not intolerable for them to endure the offender for the less than two years until the next regular election.
The idea of a nonbinding initiative to measure public opinion is subject to the coals-to-Newcastle criticism. Does anyone think that there is insufficient measurement of public opinion?
A binding initiative is incompatible with the genius of republican government, the essence of which is the principle of representation: in a republic, the people do not decide issues, they decide who shall decide.
Now, granted, a NOTA line on the ballot would provide catharsis for the disgruntled. And it might have two other beneficial effects.
It might call the electorate's bluff. Every election year the public gets sniffy about the choices churned up by the political process. The electorate, with its entitlement mentality, feels entitled to have Jeffersons and Lincolns pop up like dandelions. Under NOTA, voters could hold out for what they consider the excellence owed them, or they would forfeit their right to complain. Or they would feel - this is a Calvinist touch - guilty if they did complain.
There is a problem with NOTA as applied to presidential elections. If NOTA caused some House and Senate seats to be vacant for a while, that would hardly matter: a senator is 1/100th of one half of one of the three branches of government; a representative is 1/435th. But the Constitution is quite picky about there being a president at all times. Besides, the world being a dangerous place, there should always be a commander in chief to point the armed services in the appropriate direction.
So regarding Hoekstra's reforms, a prudent person must vote: NOTA.