Democracy Needs the Option to Vote NO

Ranked-choice voting has become one of America’s most prominent electoral reforms. It offers voters more ways to rank candidates and can reduce the fear of “wasting” a vote in crowded races.

But it does not address a more basic deficiency in American elections: voters can vote for a candidate, but they generally cannot vote against one.

That gap matters most in elections with no real choice at all. Ballotpedia reported that nearly 70 percent of the U.S. elections it tracked in 2024 were uncontested. In an uncontested race, there is nothing to rank. A voter may support the sole candidate, stay home, or cast a symbolic write-in vote. But a voter who strongly rejects that candidate has no direct way to say so.

The problem also exists in contested elections. Positive votes can be divided among several candidates, allowing a candidate with intense opposition to win. Ranked-choice voting may improve how preferences are aggregated among multiple candidates, but it does not give voters a formal means of withholding consent from any candidate.

A simple reform could do that: Negative Vote, also called the Balanced Ballot.

Under this system, each voter has one vote. The voter may cast a YES vote for the candidate they most support or a NO vote against the candidate they most oppose. A YES counts as +1; a NO counts as −1. The candidate with the highest net total wins. If every candidate receives a net-negative result, the election is rerun.

Consider a two-candidate contest. Candidate A receives YES votes from 34% of eligible voters; Candidate B receives YES votes from 33%. Under ordinary plurality, A wins.

Now suppose that making a NO vote available brings an additional 5% of eligible voters into the election. If 4% vote NO on A and 1% vote NO on B, A’s net support falls to 30% and B’s to 32%. B wins.

That outcome would not establish that B enjoys a majority mandate: B’s 32% net support would still fall short of a majority of the 72% who voted. But it would reflect a larger electorate’s combined judgment of support and rejection. In a close contest, that distinction can matter.

This is the essential difference between ranked-choice voting and Negative Vote. RCV gives voters more ways to express preference among candidates. Negative Vote expands the range of voters who can participate and gives every voter a way to express rejection.

Democracy is not only about choosing whom we want to govern us. It is also about deciding whom we do not want to govern us.

Today, a voter who dislikes every candidate but particularly opposes one faces unsatisfying choices: support the lesser evil, vote for a candidate with little prospect of winning, or abstain. Negative Vote adds a fourth option: vote against the candidate most unacceptable to you.

That option could also change candidates’ incentives. Under ordinary elections, candidates can prosper by mobilizing a loyal base even when their positions alienate many other voters. Under a one-vote YES-or-NO system, alienating voters carries an explicit electoral cost. Candidates and parties would have greater reason to seek broad acceptability, not merely intense support from their most committed followers.

Critics may reasonably worry that a NO option would reward negative campaigning or invite voters to oppose every candidate. The design matters. Each voter must have only one decisive vote—either YES for one candidate or NO against one candidate—not an unlimited opportunity to cast NO votes against the entire field. That constraint preserves the expressive benefit without turning the ballot into a vehicle for indiscriminate negativity.

The available evidence is preliminary but promising. This author’s peer-reviewed paper in Constitutional Political Economy presents survey evidence that the NO option may increase turnout by 4-10%.

The Balanced Ballot requires no ranking, no transfer rounds, and no complicated counting. It asks one question:

YES or NO?

It works in elections with one candidate, two candidates, or many candidates. It does not replace the right to choose. It completes it.

Universal suffrage gave citizens the right to vote. The secret ballot protected voters from coercion. Direct elections gave citizens greater control over who governs them.

The next democratic reform should give citizens a meaningful right to reject.

Tienshang "Sam" Chang is the principal financial supporter of the Negative Vote Association, which funded some surveys discussed in related research. Chang has published peer-reviewed research on Negative Vote and takes responsibility for the views expressed here.