Can someone help me out? What is a spoiled ballot exactly?

[ClintCooper2003]

[Winamericaback]

1. No presidential vote

The machine can't verify a presidential vote on it. They SHOULD be then hand counted. They usually aren't leading the the disefranchisment of thousands of voters.

[roseBudd]

2. A spoiled ballot is an overvote or an undervote (no vote)

there are 93,000 spolied ballots in ohio that have either no vote for president or too many candidates selected for president.

[ClintCooper2003]

4. But if someone accidentally votes for two different candidates...

for President, wouldn't that automatically invalidate the ballot?

[roseBudd]

5. yes that is why it is spoiled, but an undervote can be counted

if the intent of the voter is clear. With punchcards the chads may not have completely detached. On an optiscan the bubble may be circled instead of colored in.

[TruthIsAll]

8. You assume a double-punch is a voter error. Why?

Let's say you had a lot of punched card votes, like Gore did in a lot of Florida minority precincts.

What would you do to make sure these votes were never counted?

[berniew1]

10. Overvotes can be legal votes also. Gore had thousands in 2000.

Overvotes(punched twice) can be legal votes also. Gore had thousands of overvotes that were legal Gore votes in Florida in 2000, but they weren't counted due to improper election proceedures. Several counties such as Palm Beach, Duval, Gadsden, etc. had butterfly designs where it was possible to vote for the same person twice. Once on one page under the candidate and another on a another page where a voter could write in the candidate's name and vote for him. Voters in some precincts were warned by election officials to vote in all vote groups, so they voted for Gore in the first group and also in the second group. But the voters intent was clear and under Florida law thats all thats needed. But they could only be counted by a hand count and that was denied. They should have not automatically discarded votes when the second vote was for write in
(and the write-in was the same candidate voted for). But that was the only way Bush could win. Gore had thousands of legal "overvotes" that would have insured his win if counted, without worrying about hanging chad.

[Vincardog]

3. Two votes for the same office, a 'Hanging Chad', a write in cantidate

filled in but not filling in the circle by RIGHT IN CANTIDATE.
Ther are a lot iof ways to spoil a ballot.

[Iceburg]

6. It a nutshell a non-valid vote. What constitutes an valid or invalid

votes depends on the method of voting (paper ballot, datavote/lever, optican scan, punched card/votamatic etc)

Here's an excellent resource (with images)
http://www.norc.uchicago.edu/fl/ballot.asp

[mockmonkey]

7. A ballot

marked in favor of Kerry.

[read the law first]

9. FINALLY!!! One I know the answer to.

A spoiled ballot is a ballot that can not be read by the machine. It is NOT an undervote or an overvote. Readable ballots that for whatever reason don't have a vote for a particular office or have too many votes for a particular office. Those are, strangely enough, called undervotes and overvotes, respectively.

It is absolutely incorrect as a matter of election law in every state that I know of to call an undervote or an overvote a spoiled ballot.

Examples of spoiled ballots are ones that have been wrinkled so that they are unreadable (this happens A LOT in absentee ballots). Sometimes the absentee ballot clerk cuts through the ballot when they open the envelope with the letter opener. That is a spoiled ballot. Sometimes the ballots get things spilled on them or people try to erase pen marks and end up making holes in the ballots.

At the precinct, a spoiled ballot is one that the voter messed up or the votamatic messed up and the voter asked for a new ballot. The old one is a spoiled ballot.

Again, it is incorrect to refer to a ballot with an undervote or an overvote as a spoiled ballot. I know its not sexy or exciting but an undervote should be called an undervote and an overvote should be called an overvote. A spoiled ballot is one that is either: (1) in the tabulation sense completely unreadable or (2) in the poll operation sense a discarded ballot from a precinct that goes into the spoiled ballot bag.

Thanks for asking, I finally got a question that I knew the answer to! woo hoo!

Now, just because one calls something by its correct name DOESN'T mean that they shouldn't ALL be looked at very carefully and analyzed for readily discernable votes.

[righteous1]

11. You get three points for this one, you are 100% correct n/t