BV215 — None of the Above wins (STAR), with a null abstention

Method: STAR (single winner) · 1 seat · Expected winner: None of the Above · full count →

▶ Live on BetterVoting: vote · results ↗ (election 26khr3)

A constructed protest election that tests BetterVoting's None of the Above (c-nota) candidate and the flat-0 vs null-abstention vs NOTA distinction — and surfaces a product question: when None of the Above wins, BetterVoting simply seats it.

What it teaches

1. None of the Above is a real candidate. On BetterVoting it's the special c-nota candidate, scored 0–5 like anyone else — not a spoiler flag. Here a protest majority scores it 5 and it wins outright. Neither BetterVoting nor the Larry Hastings engine gives a NOTA win any special handling (no "no winner / re-run" state); both just elect "None of the Above." That is deliberate on BetterVoting's side — see below.

2. Flat 0 vs null abstention. Most rejections here are an explicit 0. Ballot 2 instead leaves None of the Above unscored — BetterVoting stores that as score: null ("didn't score this candidate"), which is distinct from 0. In the LH engine that per-candidate abstention is the & marker (tabulates as 0, but kept separate in the record — see the Abs column below). A single unscored candidate does not make the whole ballot an abstention (BetterVoting reported nAbstentions: 0). The full concept — how a zero, an abstention, and a NOTA vote differ — is in the lesson Abstention vs. a zero vs. "None of the Above".

3. BV and LH agree on the winner and every score/runoff number.

The ballots

Candidates: Ada, Bruno, None of the Above. & = candidate abstention (BetterVoting null).

The ballots as marked — the filled bubble is the score given, and the score is the number in its column:

#	Ballot as marked	Ada	Bruno	None of the Above
1		5	1	0
2		5	1	&
3		0	0	5
4		0	0	5
5		0	0	5
6		0	0	5

Voters 1 and 2 marked the same opinion of the candidates; they differ only on whether NOTA got an explicit 0 or no mark at all — and the count treats those the same.

The result

None of the Above is elected. It tops the score round (20 vs Ada 10 vs Bruno 2), then wins the automatic runoff 4–2 over Ada.

--- STAR Voting Method (single winner) ---

[STAR Voting]
 Tabulating 6 ballots.
Count × Ada,Bruno,None of the Above
    4 ×   0,    0,                5
    1 ×   5,    1,                0
    1 ×   5,    1,                &

[STAR Voting: Scoring Round]
 The two highest-scoring candidates advance to the next round.
   None of the Above -- 20 -- First place
   Ada               -- 10 -- Second place
   Bruno             --  2
 None of the Above and Ada advance.

[STAR Voting: Automatic Runoff Round]
 The candidate preferred in the most head-to-head matchups wins.
   None of the Above -- 4 -- First place
   Ada               -- 2
   Equal Support     -- 0
 None of the Above wins.
   Runoff math:
     6  ballots cast
   − 0  Equal Support (no preference between the two finalists)
     ─
     6  voters with a preference  (majority = 4)
           None of the Above 4 (67%)  ·  Ada 2 (33%)

[STAR Voting: Winner — STAR Voting Method (single winner)]
 None of the Above

(Note the Abs column: None of the Above shows 1 abstention — ballot 2's & — kept distinct from the 0 scores.)

Full engine detail: bv215_26khr3_nota_wins_tabulated.txt. Frozen BetterVoting export: bv215_26khr3_nota_wins_bv_export.json. Tabulatable source: bv215_26khr3_nota_wins.yaml.

By design — and what that puts on you

Seating "None of the Above" as the winner is easy to read as unintended: a NOTA option usually exists so voters can say no candidate should be seated. We asked, as Equal-Vote/bettervoting#1421, and the answer (2026-08-19, closed not-planned) is that it is intentional — if NOTA wins, the next steps are "up to the bylaws of the organization running the election", and further handling is "out of scope for the BetterVoting site."

So this is a design stance rather than a defect, and the consequence lands on whoever convenes the election: a NOTA option only means something if your bylaws say what a NOTA win does. The platform will seat it and stop. If the intended outcome is a re-run, a vacancy, or a re-opened nomination period, that has to be written down somewhere other than the ballot — nothing in the count will produce it, and nothing in the result will flag that a decision is owed. Worth deciding before the election, since the result page reads exactly like an ordinary win.

This sits inside a wider cluster of BetterVoting abstain/blank/zero tickets — see the BV abstain issue index.