Americans like to complain and when it comes to presidential elections, they pour it on with intense resolve. Many feel that no candidate offers answers to their wants and needs. At a time when new challenges of climate change, global terrorism, financial market meltdowns, and general paranoia are sweeping the globe in the 21st century, it is clear that many people feel 20th century politics just don’t pass muster. Should people be told to suck it up and vote for the lesser of two evils or simply lower their expectations of elected officials? Is a poor voter turnout concerning only to the extent it deflates a particular party’s chances for electoral victory? Is poor turnout linked to the often cited voter apathy in a country where the malaise of commercial comfort has deadened the politically-active brain of the American citizen?

As these questions arise, two options are presented to election machines: evolve to include the alienated or merely sway those who remain. While it might be easier for a focus group to target a smaller pool of steadfast voters, most ordinary folks would agree that higher political involvement should be an ultimate goal of democracy. Both as a research tool and remedial measure, the answer may lie in adding another line to voting cards or another button in voting machines. Next to the candidates for office, there would be included an option labeled “no candidate.”

What would be the purpose of such an outwardly cynical measure? For starters, it could help to explain the egregious lack of voter turnout in this democratic nation. Perhaps no phenomenon could be better explained through this measure than the legendary “youth vote.” The youth vote has been simultaneously the most trumpeted, coveted, and wholly disappointing voter bloc in the United States. In nearly every election cycle since Kennedy’s victory, voters under the age of 30 have been targeted by candidates through get-out-the-vote drives, grassroots activism, and other grand schemes to get us off our lazy asses and vote. Yet by November 5th, like a kegger without the keg, political parties are continually shocked and disappointed by another absence of youth voter turnout when it could have easily tipped the scales.

While it’s easy for to sermonize about the apathy of the young citizen, such a view partial at best. It’s true that many of us would rather wake-and-bake than haul our asses to the local church or YMCA one day of the year to pull a lever, but ingrained apathy to the political process is not the primary reason we don’t vote. We usually just loathe the candidates.

In the past two decades, there has been a cavalcade of horrible candidates both receiving the nomination of their parties and getting booted from the race beforehand. To take the most recent example, if you asked any Democrat under the age of 30 if they were excited about the prospect of a John Kerry presidency, he or she would probably say yes. However, if you then asked him if they were excited about John Kerry the candidate, I think you can guess the answer.

The sad fact is that dissatisfaction with a contemporary president, congressman, or other elected official is not a reliable impetus for actually going out to vote, regardless of the election cycle fervor it generates prior to November 4th. If opposition candidates fail to arouse political inspiration in voters, then those voters just as likely to begrudgingly stay home on voting day than they are to cast their vote for change. This is NOT apathy and should not be construed as such following disappointing voter turnouts in elections. However, there is currently no way to sort out the motivations for not voting outside of blunt surveys after the polls closing. The only effective tool at separating principled silence over citizen sloth would be to offer those voters a choice of no choice at the ballot box.

While such a simple idea hardly seems objectionable in a technical sense, one can readily imagine why at least the Democratic Party would oppose such a measure. It’s arguable that such a “no option” option would end up creating a Perot/Nader quandary in which the absence of a candidate takes the votes from an actual candidate and tips the election. At that point, it would become a question of who’s the most weary in the U.S., the Democrat or the Republican. While it can be argued that a Republican will vote for any candidate who promises small government and low taxes and a Democrat will vote for anyone who promises a litany of social and environmental programs and pledges to oust a Republican incumbent, it’s evident that cynicism and dissatisfaction runs far more rife on the Democratic side. And despite Eminem and Eddie Vedder telling young Democrats to fulfill their civic duty, many won’t because of the feeling of detachment from their political options.

At the very least, providing the “no candidate” option would force both the RNC and the DNC to actually evaluate the reach of their message. While parties can poo-poo a Nader or a Perot as election spoilers, they do not crop up in every election. One can hardly fault dissatisfied voters for “throwing” an election when the option to choose no candidate is included on every ballot. Although it might only lead to endless complaining about impossibly high standards on behalf of voters, it would be interesting to see an election in which the popular choice was no choice. At the very least, a clear conclusion would arise from a ballot with such an option: a lot of us are fed up and now have a way to say it.