Wendy Townley v. Ross Miller
Opinion
Opinion
Fisher, J.
Since 1975, Nevada has given its voters the ability to register their disapproval of all the named candidates running for a particular office in statewide and presidential elections by voting for “None of these candidates,” commonly referred to as NOTC. The Secretary of State must count and report to the public the number of NOTC ballots cast for each office, but they cannot be counted in determining the winner among the named candidates in those races. They do, of course, provide a way for disaffected voters to express themselves other than by simply not voting. In June 2012, plaintiffs challenged this 37-year-old state election law by suing in the United States District Court for the District of Nevada to prohibit the NOTC option from appearing on the November 2012 ballot and any others thereafter. Their contention is that unless NOTC votes are given “legal effect” in some manner, those voters are “disenfranchised” and so the NOTC option cannot appear on the ballot at all. Although the merits of their arguments are questionable, we do not resolve them because we hold that none of these plaintiffs has standing to assert the claims made in this lawsuit.