Does NOTA Affect Voter Turnout? Evidence from State Legislative Elections in India

Mandal, Arindam and Mandal, Biswajit and Bhattacharjee, Prasun (2016): Does NOTA Affect Voter Turnout? Evidence from State Legislative Elections in India.

Abstract

This paper explores the impact of introduction of the ‘None of the Above’ (NOTA) option in Indian legislative elections. NOTA was introduced as a ballot option following the Supreme Court ruling in 2013 based on the argument that more choices to voters will enhance voter participation. We take advantage of the state-time variation in introduction of NOTA option in state legislative assembly elections in 2013 to study its impact on voter turnout. Using election data from five major Indian states between 2008 and 2013, we find evidences suggesting that NOTA may not have led to increased voter participation. However, our results are not conclusive.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Voting, Election, NOTA, None of the Above, Reservation
• Subjects: D - Microeconomics > D7 - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making > D72 - Political Processes: Rent-Seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior

References

Chatterjee, S., Ujhelyi, G., & Szabo, A. (2016): "None of the Above" Votes in India and the Consumption Utility of Voting. University of Houston.

Chauhan, Chetan (2013). “SC empowers voters, gives them option to reject electoral candidates”. Hindustan Times. (September 30).

Diwakar, R. (2008). Voter turnout in the Indian states: An empirical analysis. Journal of elections, public opinion and parties, 18(1), 75-100.

Downs, A. (1957). An economic theory of democracy.Harper and Row.

Fiorina, M. P., & Shepsle, K. A. (1989). Is negative voting an artifact?American Journal of Political Science, 423-439.

Katju, M. (2013). The ‘None of the AboveOption’. Economic & Political Weekly, 48(42), 11.

McMillan, A. (2005). Standing at the margins: representation and electoral reservation in India. Delhi: Oxford University Press.

McMillan, A. (2010). The Election Commission,.in: N.G. Jayal and P.B. Mehta (eds):The Oxford Companion to Politics in India, Oxford University Press, Oxford: UK.

Rosenbaum, P. R., & Rubin, D. B. (1983). Assessing sensitivity to an unobserved binary covariate in an observational study with binary outcome. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series B (Methodological), 212-218.

Yadav, Y. (2000).Understanding the Second Democratic Upsurge: Trends of Bahujan Participation in Electoral Politics in the 1990s, in Francine R Frankel, Zoya Hasan, Rajeev Bhargava and Balveer Arora (eds), Transforming India, Oxford