It is not clear from that article how one is to distinguish intentional non-voting from apathy. It seems to me that if one wishes to make a statement of their non-vote, they need to go to the poll and submit a blank ballot, not just stay home on election day. That may be the idea here, but the article doesn't actually seem to say so.
I particularly like the idea of having a "none of the above" box on a ballot. It has two functions:
a) "None of the above" is officially reported as part of the election statistics, distinguishing itself as a protest vote, compared to spoiled ballots which might be for other reasons.
b) If "none of the above" wins, they have to hold the election again, but all the current candidates are prohibited from standing.
What I think this will do is promote positive voting. At the moment a lot of voting is negative - to stop the worse candidate from getting in. If "none of the above" becomes an option, the candidates may all be deselected. Each one is therefore encouraged to explain to people why they are a positive choice and not just the least worst.
In the US Pres and Congressional elections, at least, we have none of the above. Vote for any third party. You know they won't win, but vote for them anyway. This is how you can cast a vote, that gets counted, against the Republicans and the Democrats both.
Write one in if there isn't one running for a particular office.
I always vote 3rd, I'm disgusted. I haven't done a write-in yet, don't know the rules and how to do it correctly so I didn't want to invalidate the rest of my ballot. But I'll start doing that to.
I wonder what would happen if "None of the above" were given a large number of write-ins in a US election. Would they be considered spoilt since there's no such person?
IIRC, in most US elections, "write ins" are only valid if they are not only for a real person, but a real person who meets the legal qualifications for the position and has officially filed as a write-in candidate. So, yeah, they'd be spoiled ballots.
EDIT: a bit more looking around turned up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protest_vote which seems to be what I'm thinking of.