Voting for None

Al Shugart’s grand effort to place “none of the above” as a choice on California’s ballot in 2000 is not as grand as it appears (Feb. 1). Because a nonbinding “none of the above” vote does not change the outcome of a political race, it is as your article suggested “purely symbolic.” Furthermore, this rich man’s campaign may injure any future citizen effort to someday place a binding measure on our ballot.

I was a volunteer who collected signatures to place a binding “none of the above” measure on the ballot in California last year. We failed to collect the necessary signatures because democracy is an honest struggle when done in the grass roots and doesn’t always succeed.

STAN SALTER

Anaheim

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Having Shugart’s “none of the above” on the ballot might at least create voters who would otherwise never see the inside of a voting booth. A “vote for nothing” is still a vote.

STEVEN M. MONTGOMERY

Pasadena

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I don’t care if you are on the left or the right; if you take politics seriously, you begin looking for a candidate as much as a year in advance and go out and give him or her your time and dedication and, yes, money. You stuff envelopes, you distribute bumper stickers and buttons, you man phone banks, you knock on doors.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of the population sits home and watches Saturday football and reruns of “Roseanne.” Then after the primaries and the campaign, when the World Series ends, they suddenly wake up and discover that an election is a week away. Then they cry, “Are these the only bozos we have to choose between?”

Well, I don’t think that we who labor and study and man the barricades should be told that a year of work and dedication can be tossed out the window by a bunch of people who are too lazy to participate in the rest of the work of governing the country, who can destroy the work of others by merely pushing a button on election day that reads “none of the above.”

ROBERT A. FRUG

Toluca Lake