“None of the above”, strategic abstention, and mis-marking ballots are sometimes indications of voter dissatisfaction with the choices available to them in an election. This phenomenon has been studied in the research literature, for example, Lucas Nunez, Rod Kiewiet, and I wrote a recent VTP working paper that discusses this at length (“A Taxonomy of Protest Voting“, also available in final published form in the Annual Review of Political Science).

I’m always looking for examples of these sorts of issues in contemporary elections, and this story in the New York Times caught my attention. According to the story (“In Cambodia, Dissenting Voters Find Ways to Say “None of the Above“”), in the recent election in Cambodia of the about 600,000 ballots cast, 8.6% of those ballots were “inadmissible”.

While it is difficult, without further information, to really discern the underlying rationale for all of these “inadmissible” ballots (as Lucas, Rod, and I argue in our paper), this seems like a high rate of problematic ballots, which when combined with the qualitative reports from actual Cambodian voters quoted in the New York Times article indicates that voter dissatisfaction is likely behind many of this problematic ballots.

Though it would be quite interesting to get either voting-station level or even some other micro-data to better understand possible voter intent with respect to these “inadmissible” ballots that were cast in this election.