The beauty of ‘none’

In 2014, Democrats tried gamely to recruit a recognizable candidate to run against popular incumbent Gov. Brian Sandoval.

They failed. Big time.

So, I reasoned then, if the Democratic Party wasn’t going to give Democrats a candidate they could get behind, then they should get behind nobody.

Or, as we call it in Nevada, “None of These Candidates.”

And sure enough, “None” won, earning 21,725 votes, just shy of 30 percent of the primary vote in a field that featured eight actual flesh-and-blood people. (Under Nevada law, votes for “None” are discounted, and the human candidate who receives the highest vote total is considered the winner. In 2014, it was former state government official Bob Goodman, who went on to lose badly to Sandoval on Election Day.)

Now, Nevada Republicans find themselves in a position where “None” might come in handy. In fact, U.S. Sen. Dean Heller hinted publicly last week that he might pick that option, since he objected to Donald Trump’s remarks on a range of issues, but didn’t want to vote for Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.

After Sandoval said he’d support Trump, U.S. Sen. Harry Reid said the governor should have gone with “None” instead. (It’s not clear how Reid felt about the “None” movement in 2014, especially since it was his political machine that failed to locate a candidate capable of running against Sandoval.)

Heller’s embrace of “None” is somewhat ironic, too, given that pro-Mitt Romney forces tried to kill “None” in 2012, arguing in a lawsuit that it deprived voters of their franchise because “None” could never actually win the election. (They feared defections to “None” to protest a lackluster Romney effort.) A federal judge briefly agreed, before being conspicuously corrected by cooler heads on the 9th U.S. Circtuit Court of Appeals.

Others abjure “None” because they believe it’s not a real choice, arguing that elections should be contests over ideas and the men and women who advance them. A vote for “None” is a discarded vote, they say.

But I maintain the opposite: The only discarded votes are the ones in which eligible people fail to participate at all. “None,” by contrast, is a legitimate choice, every bit as much as casting a vote for a real-person, third-party candidate. Only by voting “None,” you tell all the people and parties represented that you’ve weighed the candidates, found them all wanting and delivered a harsh judgment: Nobody is better than these somebodies.

Of course, it would be better to give “None” some teeth, so that if it ever “won” an election, a new contest could be scheduled, one in which the previous slate of candidates, having already been rejected, is barred from running again. But it’s still a pretty good option.

The question is, will Republicans take it, the way many of their Democratic counterparts did in 2014? To be sure, the Democrats had little to lose in 2014. There’s far more at stake for the Republicans in choosing “None” this time around.

But the fact is, Trump will be perhaps the least-qualified person ever to win the nomination of a major political party. Only the blindest partisans can conclude that simply because they checked the same box as Trump on a registration form that their support is automatic. The danger isn’t just to the modern Republican Party, although that’s considerable. It’s to the nation and the world as well.

Sandoval and other Republicans may have made their peace with it. But Heller is on to to something. When your party gives you an unacceptable nominee, you needn’t vote Democratic or third party. There’s another choice, one available only in Nevada.

It’s “None.”

Steve Sebelius is a Review-Journal political columnist and co-host of “PoliticsNOW,” airing at 5:30 p.m. Sundays on 8NewsNow. Follow him on Twitter (@SteveSebelius) or reach him at 702-387-5276 or SSebelius@reviewjournal.com.