By Greta Hallberg, For The Miami Student
Super Tuesday, when 11 states hold primary elections for the presidential race, left the American public with a pretty clear picture of its political future. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and real estate mogul Donald Trump emerged as the likely nominees for the parties.
I don't know about you, but I'm terrified.
Clinton's career has been plagued by scandals. In our lifetime, she's had a private email server and screwed up in Benghazi. As First Lady, she faced the Supreme Court for subpoenaed records from her law firm. She also stood by her adulterous husband after he publicly humiliated her by having an affair with an intern. If she can't stand up to her husband, how can we expect her to stand up to terrorist organizations such as ISIS and Boko Haram?
Donald Trump is also unfit to govern the country. He's horribly offensive, outwardly racist and openly sexist. He has ridiculous and politically impossible ideas. He wants to prevent all Muslims from entering the country and build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Furthermore, his "success" in real estate and development is actually underwhelming. He inherited and subsequently lost millions of dollars from his father. Some of his business ventures, like Trump Vodka and Trump Magazine, failed. He's not exactly the groundbreaking businessman he claims to be.
Neither the Democratic nor Republican frontrunners are fit to uphold the values of the United States. Clinton isn't trustworthy and has abused the power that's been given to her. Trump is a straight-up liar who accepted an endorsement from a former Ku Klux Klan leader. I frankly don't want either of them in the Oval Office next year.
Last January, I went abroad to New Delhi, India, for an art trip. Pursuing a journalism and economics degree, I wasn't really there to make art. I really just wanted to see the Taj Mahal and drink chai and learn about the Indian culture.
We stayed at an artist residency with professional artists from France, Brazil and areas in India. I befriended a sculptor from Ahmedabad, in the southern part of the country. I was much more interested in the political situation of the country, so I asked him about Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Modi had been elected about six months before I arrived in India. His face was on bus stops and metro stations and billboards everywhere I turned. I was curious about what my artist friend had to say. He wasn't a big fan. I asked him if he voted for Modi. He said no. Naturally, the next question was who did he vote for.
"No one," he said. "I voted for no one."
I nodded, knowingly. Artists can be radical, countercultural. I could understand why he may not have voted.
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"So you just didn't vote?" I said.
"No, I voted. I just voted for nobody," he said.
This obviously caught my attention. I've only voted in one election, but when I sent in my absentee ballot in 2012, I definitely didn't see "nobody" as an option for president.
My friend explained that voting for nobody was a way to exercise your democratic right to vote, but still voice that you don't support or agree with any of the candidates on the ballot. In India, the vote for "none of the above" is called Rule 49-0.
In 2014, the NOTA option got 1.1 percent of the vote in India. In a country the size of India, that's 6 million people. A significant chunk of the population voted by dissenting from all of the viable candidates.
In January 2015, I never anticipated that we'd be at the point where a "nobody" vote would be a viable option for the presidential election in America. Surely we'd have qualified candidates leading the polls ... right?
Now it's March 2016 and I've proven myself wrong. We have a scandal-ridden Democrat and a lying bigot Republican as the frontrunners for the leader of the free world. I know nothing's set yet - Sen. Bernie Sanders could upset Clinton in the next few primary states. Trump could fall short of the 1,237 delegates he needs to clinch the nomination.
But if that doesn't happen? I'll find myself at the polls in November trying to decide between the lesser of two evils. I'd feel guilty voting for either. A vote for "nobody" would be a popular choice among any sane Republican, anti-Hillary Democrat, and pretty much every millennial who self-identifies as "socially liberal but fiscally conservative."
A NOTA vote is a viable option for American politics, especially given our current field of leading candidates. If this trend of demagogue candidates continues in the future, state legislatures should consider adding a "nobody" vote on their ballots.
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