Electoral cynicism has a new champion.

A University of Ottawa student is taking the federal government to court because federal election ballots don’t provide a “none of the above” option, which he argues is an affront to free speech.

David Rodriguez, 26, filed a statement of claim in Federal Court arguing that limiting voting options only to specific candidates “prevents electors from officially expressing dissatisfaction with all of the candidates available to them in the federal general elections.”

Rodriguez claims that he didn’t vote in the last election “due to the inability to officially express dissatisfaction with all of the candidates available to him.”

But the Department of Justice’s statement of defence said the Charter’s guarantee of freedom of expression section does not cover a “positive right to be provided with specific means of expression,” and that the Canada Elections Act doesn’t limit his “ability to demonstrate his dissatisfaction with all of the candidates listed on a federal elections ballot.”

It said spoiling a ballot counts as a “form of political expression” and notes that not voting is also an option.

Under the Canada Elections Act, Elections Canada has to report the number of rejected ballots from each election.

Rodriguez filed a reply to the statement of defence, arguing that not voting is “too vague and ambiguous” an act to express a total rejection of all the candidates.

Rodriguez’s claims have not been tested in court. The government is asking for a summary judgment on the matter early this year.

He’s not the only person to demand the right to publicly declare all the candidates in a given race are terrible.

In 2001, then-Liberal MP Charles Caccia put forward a private member’s bill that would have added “none of the above” to federal ballots, but it was dropped from the order paper after failing to win support. Then-PC MP Peter MacKay suggested in debate that such a ballot option would entrench cynicism in the electoral system. The prospect of a “none of the above” on ballots was also floated in 2016 at the electoral reform committee, but in the context of whether it should be a feature of a mandatory voting system.

In a 2016 Ontario byelection, a man legally changed his name to None of the Above (specifically, to “Znoneofthe, Above,” so he would appear at the bottom of a ballot), as a way to give voters an option to express their political rage.

Ontario also has a None of the Above Party, formed in 2014 to allow for the same kind of expression of dissatisfaction. None of its candidates has ever won a seat in the legislature.

Rodriguez’s riding was Gatineau in the 2015 election.