Indian voters get chance to mark 'none of the above' on poll card Election observers and officials seal a ballot box prior to voting for India's new president at Parliament House in New Delhi last year. India's Supreme Court has struck a blow for voters who look at the list of candidates and think "Oh, my God, which of these scumbags do I vote for?" It has given them another option on the voting machine: To press a button marked "none of the above." The hope is that if enough Indians take this option, it will spur political parties to put up honest and upright candidates. "Negative voting will lead to a systemic change in polls and political parties will be forced to project clean candidates," a Supreme Court judge said. The move has been welcomed by civil rights groups and voters. "It will send a strong message to political parties to pick candidates who are honest instead of the ruffians they give us," said Sanjay Verma, a New Delhi teacher. India boasts it's the world's largest democracy, but it has possibly the largest number of MPs with criminal records, about a third of the 790 MPs in the current parliament. If you add the members of the state assemblies, the total number is 1460. The government has argued that the new option will confuse voters and that elections are meant to "elect, and not reject." "When you've got someone accused of rape and another person accused of corruption, I have to choose the lesser of two evils, but why should I do that?" college student Nina Raina said. Activists campaigning to remove the dirt from Indian politics had been hoping that India's Election Commission would decide that, if a majority of voters press the "none of the above" button, the election would be cancelled. But the commission has said that no matter how many voters reject all the candidates, the candidate who wins the largest number of votes will be elected. The Supreme Court ruled in July that MPs, if convicted of a crime, must be removed from office instantly. In the past, the convicted person was allowed to remain an MP on the grounds that an appeal had been filed. Appeals in India can take 10 to 20 years to reach a conclusion. The first casualty of this rule was the rustic and buffoonish Lalu Prasad Yadav. Yadav, 66, was convicted on Monday of pocketing millions of dollars in subsidies for non-existent livestock in a case dating back 17 years. Before the Supreme Court ruling on convicted MPs, Yadav would have filed an appeal and stayed in office. Instead, he was bundled into a police van and taken to jail.