My mom had an outburst at the poll today. It involved voting with pencils. From what I understand the counting is done by non-partisan professionals. When they count the votes they open a ballot and read out the vote. I would then conclude, that it would be near impossible for someone to smudge a ballot and call it spoiled? There are facebook rumours that is going on, but you it could just be paranoia?
Paper ballot. Quite old-faashioned, they don’t use electronic tabulation to count votes.
In the US many people undervote, vote for nobody for certain offices. The vote counters arrogantly consider that they are helping the voter when they complete the ballot for him by marking the races not yet voted for.