Absentee ballots' errors total 2% (Palm Beach voter alert!)

Palm Beach Post ^ | 8/29/04 | Deana Poole

[not_apathetic_anymore]

Exactly. Is that such a difficult concept? You don't follow all the rules, your vote doesn't count. You can't read well enough to understand the rules and and you do it wrong. Too bad.

[supercat]

If voter intent can be determined, a second ballot will be filled out correctly and scanned by a vote-counting machine, LePore said. "It's not like they're thrown out and not counted."

If a ballot is 'invalid' becaue of some factor outside the voter's control (e.g. the mailman dropped it in a puddle) then it is correct and proper to have it recorded per the voter's apparent "intent". If, however, a voter casts an invalid ballot because of the voter's own negligence, there is no basis for counting the ballot as any sort of vote.

Elections in Rockford, IL have turned on this very issue; the instructions on the ballot explicitly state that voters must put an "X" in the box next to their candidate. They must not fill in the box, circle the box, put a checkmark in the box, or do anything else. Only an "X" constitutes a valid ballot. In at least one election, the candidate who won would not have done so if checkmark ballots counted as votes. Such ballots, however, were rejected for failure to follow the rules, and so the candidate who was preferred by more of the people who tried to vote, lost.