A friend has been tossing around the idea of "null vote" for quite some time. Basically, to encourage a bigger proportion of constituency to vote, add a new bra

A friend has been tossing around the idea of "null vote" for quite some time. Basically, to encourage a bigger proportion of constituency to vote, add a new bracket: "none of the above". And then start to visibly track that figure. (Note: this is in Finland, not US) The problem with general elections is that there is no meaningful choice. You can vote for the shade of your representative, but you can't vote against putting an invertebrate lizard in position of power. Adding a valid "none of the above" choice to the ballot would be a way to track just how big a fraction of population disagree with ALL of the available representative options. Currently we lump "invalid" votes together with disqualified votes, so protest votes do not count. They are treated as empty ballots. Personally I would be very much interested in seeing the results after a few years of "N/A" votes. Once the fraction of the votes to go against all of the available choices starts to gain and approach any of the potentially winning entries in the ballot, you might just see a reaction against the uselessness of current political system. At least that's what I hope.