Initiative Would Put ‘None of Above’ on Ballot

Disgusted with politics? Convinced that most candidates are power-hungry scoundrels lacking vision and dedication to the public good? Al Shugart couldn’t agree more, and he’s fighting back.

If Shugart gets his way--and odds are that he will--Californians will soon have the chance to choose “none of the above” rather than a person when they go to the polls.

Shugart, a Pebble Beach millionaire, believes the option would prompt more Californians to vote by offering them a measurable way to protest the political status quo.

“Citizens all around this country have become so disgusted with government that they just give up, and that’s horrible,” he said. “I’m passionate about my country. I want to see people go to the polls, think and get more active again.”

In pursuit of that goal, Shugart hopes to qualify an initiative for the March 2000 ballot that would add “none of the above” as a choice in statewide contests as well as presidential, congressional and legislative races.

The measure is purely symbolic; even if “none of the above” received the most votes, the candidate with the next highest number would win.

Some political reformers say the nonbinding nature of the proposal makes it virtually meaningless--a tease giving voters false hopes that their protest will make a difference.

But Shugart believes the mere presence of “none of the above” on ballots would give state politics a healthy jolt. Beyond a rise in turnout, he foresees cleaner, more substantial campaigns by politicians fearful that mudslinging would turn off voters and propel them toward “none of the above.”

He also predicts another payoff--a more appealing batch of candidates.

“The political parties won’t want their candidates losing to ‘none of the above,’ so they’ll work harder to find better people to run,” said Shugart, who is a Democrat--but never one to vote along party lines.

If Shugart succeeds, California would join Nevada as the only states to give voters the chance to say nyet in no uncertain terms. Nevada has offered a nonbinding “none of these candidates” option since 1975, one that has outpolled living, breathing politicians on four occasions--twice in congressional primaries and one time each in contests for treasurer and secretary of state.

Shugart--a trim 68-year-old as quirky as the idea he is promoting--plans to spend at least $1 million of his fortune to ensure that the initiative becomes law. If the measure passes here, he aims to bankroll copycat measures in other states.

To put the initiative on the California ballot, Shugart must collect about 419,000 signatures by June 3, a goal within easy reach of the professional signature gathering firm he’s hired.

“We’re well on our way,” he said. “People are so enthusiastic. Just the other day, the guy at the meat counter told me he’d been waiting for something like this.”

Despite such sentiments, scholars of politics predict a nonbinding “none of the above” option would be unlikely to motivate most nonvoters to vote--and would draw little support from those who do show up at the polls.

At UC San Diego, political scientist Gary Jacobson says that choosing “none of the above” would be “like voting for a third party candidate with no chance to win. People hesitate to do that because they want to believe their vote counts.”

Members of the political establishment echo that thought and express a particularly dim view of Shugart’s idea. Ray McNally, a GOP consultant, wonders why the high-tech mogul doesn’t “spend his millions on running for office or doing something constructive to improve the system.”

McNally says the measure “reinforces voter cynicism toward government at a time when we need to restore trust and confidence. . . . To me, this is a guy with too much money and too much time on his hands. He should get a life.”

Such reviews are unlikely to deter Shugart, a sunny fellow who favors Hawaiian shirts and ate chocolates during a recent interview. The founder of Seagate Technology, the computer disk drive maker, Shugart was ousted as the company’s chief executive last year and now supplies venture capital to entrepreneurs.

His office in Soquel, a beach town several Frisbee throws south of Santa Cruz, is also headquarters of the Friends of Ernest Political Action Committee, sponsor of the ballot initiative.

Friends of Ernest is named for Shugart’s dog, a Bernese mountain pooch whom Shugart ran for Congress in 1996. That stunt was Shugart’s first dramatic expression of political disaffection, though he says he’s been fed up “since I turned 21.”

Asked which recent elections would have prompted him to choose “none of the above,” Shugart is quick to reply: “That U.S. Senate race, [incumbent Barbara] Boxer versus what’s his name? Definitely none of the above.”

And Gray Davis vs. Dan Lungren for governor? “That one too.”

That’s not to say Shugart hates all politicians. In fact, he has campaigned for some. In 1966, he knocked on doors for state Sen. John Vasconcellos (D-Santa Clara) in his first run for the Assembly. Shugart also supported Edmund G. “Jerry” Brown Jr.’s bid for the U.S. Senate in 1982, and thinks Rep. Tom Campbell (R-San Jose) “does a real good job.”

Overall, however, he thinks politicians are, well, “too political.” And two years ago, he vowed never to give one another cent.

“It’s all a power thing, not a help thing,” he said. “The people who get in accept the corrupt system and refuse to do anything about it.”

Shugart--who once contemplated a run for Congress but decided the job would have conflicted with his business pursuits--concedes that “none of the above” is “just one small step” down the road toward a healthier republic. But he insists it is an important one, and at least one scholar, John J. Pitney Jr., who teaches government at Claremont McKenna College, agrees.

In an article on the topic, Pitney noted that James Madison, writing in the Federalist Papers, expressed hope that American elections would feature candidates “who possess the most attractive merit, and the most diffusive and established characters.”

But today, Pitney argued, voters often face a lineup of decidedly unsavory contenders, be they ill-prepared, ethically challenged or objectionable for other reasons.

“If free government is really based on the consent of the governed, it follows that the people should have a clear way of withholding consent from the unworthy, the unknown, or the unopposed,” Pitney wrote.

Some critics of the proposal argue that merely staying home--or leaving the ballot blank in a given race--is a sufficient means of expressing discontent. But Shugart says that sort of protest is meaningless, because it’s impossible to distinguish apathy from disgust--and impossible to tally the number of those who see no candidate worthy of their support.

Since Nevada’s Legislature adopted “none of the above” in a burst of post-Watergate humility, several other states have attempted to follow suit. In 1997, Arizona state Sen. Randall Gnant pushed a more far-reaching plan that would have invalidated an election if the “none” option won.

“It died a horrible death,” Gnant recalled in an interview, “after some of my colleagues panicked because they figured they might get thrown out.”

In California, former state Sen. William Campbell of Hacienda Heights pushed a bill to create a nonbinding system like Nevada’s in 1979, touting a poll showing that three out of five voters stayed home because of dissatisfaction with candidates. But that legislation perished in committee.

More recently, Ralph Nader sponsored a California initiative to void an election if “none of the above” came out on top--and disqualify the losers from running in a specially scheduled replay. That proposal fizzled in 1997 when volunteers failed to collect enough signatures to get it on the ballot.

Bill Gallagher, director of the grass-roots group that pushed the idea, expressed dismay that Shugart had entered the fray with a nonbinding proposal, which he called misleading.

“His version is a cruel joke for voters,” Gallagher said, “because even though they can reject Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee, it doesn’t mean anything.”

Gallagher also predicted that, under Shugart’s system, politicians who lose to “none of the above” but take office anyway would be “disgraced in the eyes of their colleagues, and thereby ineffective.”

Shugart says that although Nader’s model is appealing, he believes it would fail at the polls because of the costs associated with running a special election in cases where “none of the above” prevailed.

Still, he did not rule out a future push for such a system: “This isn’t a cure-all. Our system is terribly dysfunctional, and it’s going to take a lot of work to fix it.”