Re: Charlie Hebdo
@veti - thanks for the tip, but I am neither a UK citizen nor resident. I am also not eligible to vote or stand for elections in the country where I am currently resident, so that won't work for me.
But the point is anyway valid. The reason that the people who get elected get elected boils down to simply 2 things, party affiliation and money. Party affiliation ties candidates in to all sorts of positions they might disagree with, but they will mostly toe the line, because the parties have a limited tolerance for internal dissent. The reason for this is, again, partly down to money because party donors expect some policy commitments from the party in return for their donations.
A completely independent candidate needs tons of money to get elected*, and even if that happens its still 1 candidate among hundreds.
In the current situation, a party getting 30-40% of the vote** with a turnout of less than 50% is treated as a huge victory, since the non-voters are classed as "couldn't be bothered". But a 'none-of-the-above' option allows us to distinguish between the "couldn't be bothered" and the "extremely bothered". This also allows to distinguish protest votes to minor candidates and actual votes for these candidates.
Even if there isn't a formal mechanism to do anything with the 'none-of-the-above' votes and electoral victory is assigned as usual, it would certainly be instructive to see how many of the "couldn't be bothered" non-voters would actually bother to vote to show how bothered they really were.
* though nowadays at least if they don't have their own they can crowdfund
**may be more or less depending on number of contesting parties