Citizens for Blank Votes (Spanish: Ciudadanos En Blanco) is a Spanish political party.
In Spanish electoral law, a distinction is made between valid votes, blank votes (votos en blanco) and null votes. Blank votes are interpreted as correctly executed votes for "none of the above", and consistently about 2% of votes are blank. Voting "blank" is not the same thing as abstaining, and so it has been argued that blank votes should be recognized as legitimate by apportioning empty seats in representative bodies according to the number of blank votes. Abstainers, the argument continues, exclude themselves from the democratic process and so need not be recognized in this way.
The platform of Ciudadanos En Blanco is that, if elected, their candidates will leave their seats vacant, until such time as the Spanish electoral law is reformed to recognize blank votes in the manner described above. At that point, the party will have no more reason to exist.
The party's slogan is No votes en blanco, vota a Ciudadanos En Blanco (Do not vote "en blanco", vote for Citizens "En Blanco").
Famous quotes containing the words citizens, blank and/or votes:
“I believe the citizens of Marion County and the United States want to have judges who have feelings and who are human beings.”
—Paula Lopossa, U.S. judge. As quoted in the New York Times, p. B9 (May 21, 1993)
“There is hardly any contact more depressing to a young ardent creature than that of a mind in which years full of knowledge seem to have issued in a blank absence of interest or sympathy.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“If you can get enough votes so that mine will make a majority, you can have it.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)