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How to get zero votes in an election?


There were more than 3,400 candidates for the 2026 election hoping to lead their constituency to prosperity. Only 165 winners; more than 2800 lost their deposits, and 350 lucky ones who shocked not only all of us but the whole world by getting not even a single vote in their favor.

So today's blabber is not about why they got zero votes, but how did they got to put their names in the Guinness World Records? First, you have to be super-confident that you will get some votes even if you don't vote for yourself. 350 folks either forgot to vote for themselves or decided to vote for someone else for their own reasons. I hope some psychologists will come up with a new disorder for such kind of behavior.

I think 80% of the candidates were in the race just for fun or wanted to make their lives productive for 15 days as they went on election campaigns, begging, asking or trying to convince the folks that they were the right candidate for the job. I think it was more of a 'time-pass' thing for most of these folks.

Every five years, we have these independent candidates running for election and getting zero or handful of votes and still they keep on joining the race to waste everybody's time and make the Election Commission spend more money on ballot papers.

The 'zero-vote' winners, as we should call them, should now either go for therapy or look themselves in the mirror and question themselves if it was all worth it to waste their money and time and walk 100,000 steps to come up with nothing. Could you not convince your spouse or parents or siblings or even you local chiya pasal or evening bhatti friends to cast a vote for you?

If your own family and friends are not willing to waste their vote on you then that means you are all alone in this world and need to either go become a Yogi or start doing some Yoga or just disappear from the face of this Earth. Loneliness is not a bad thing. Go to the jungle, camp there for a decade and come up with a novel or who knows, someone will call you a 'Jungli Baba' or 'Mata' and you could then make millions from your followers.

A friend of mine has been contesting elections since 2008. In the past two decades, his total vote count has not exceeded 400 after standing up for elections in more than six of them. In the previous election, he managed to get 19 votes and in the current one, a meager 8 votes which means that this time around, only his family members voted for him while his circle of friends decided otherwise.

Prachanda won from Rukum with 10,000+ votes. I think we can call him a zero-vote winner as well, not because he got no votes, but if he hadn't gone to Rukum, he would have lost the election and that would have closed the chapter on three decades of guff, loot and extortion by our comrades. Well, he has won. He will be around 76 when the time for next election comes. Hope the Rukum basis will not vote for him then or even for his daughter if she wishes to continue her dream to become 'Sujata 2.0' .

Anyways, congratulations to all of our 'zero-vote' candidates. You have proved to all of us that there will always be folks who stand up for election just for fun and to get some Vitamin D and waste your money on chiya and buns while you are out there campaigning for yourself.

I think you need like 10,000 signatures to register a party at the Election Commission (EC). Maybe the EC wallahs should also come up with a new rule where to be an independent candidate, you need to at least have 100 signatures verified by the local ward to register yourself as a candidate for any election. Then, we will not be bored to death or strain our eyes by staring at the ballot paper with 20 different election symbols.

And to my dear friend who got only 8 votes this time around, please stop wasting your money and time. Join a political party and maybe go up the ranks, and in a decade or two, you can once again stand up for election and finally win, or at least get a decent amount of votes for a change. Or you can follow the Mahabir Dai ko formula. Do something good for your constituency without any personal benefits and maybe hope someday they will believe that you are the right candidate for the job.

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1. Democracy isn't a VIP club for winners—it's a fundamental right where every citizen, zero votes or not, can challenge the system and expose its flaws.

2. Mocking independents for "time-pass" ignores how their candidacies raise ignored issues, forcing parties to address public concerns they otherwise overlook.

3. Not voting for oneself isn't a "disorder"; many run on ideology alone, proving elections should reward ideas, not ego or family bribes.

4. Blaming candidates for EC costs is absurd—taxpayer-funded elections exist precisely to enable broad participation, not to protect elite efficiency.

5. Your "lonely yogi" sarcasm dismisses civic courage; these candidates walk thousands of steps to engage voters, building awareness even in defeat.

6. Persistent low-vote friends like yours embody resilience, not failure—joining parties often means compromising principles for the very "guff and loot" you decry.

7. Prachanda's irrelevant jab reveals your bias; zero-vote runners aren't "comrades" but everyday Nepalis rejecting dynastic or extremist dominance.

8. Demanding 100 signatures to run would gatekeep the poor and voiceless, turning elections into a rich-party monopoly that kills true pluralism.

9. "Vitamin D and chiya" campaigns foster community dialogue; zero votes spark national reflection on why voters reject certain symbols and symbols of change.

10. True heroes aren't guaranteed winners but those brave enough to try—congratulations to zero-vote candidates for proving democracy lives in participation, not just victory tallies.