the nation that imagines itself the premiere democracy in the world can't conduct an election worthy of liberia. man, you guys are a joke.
1
Does anyone seriously believe that this Republican-controlled group of Republicans in a majority of Republicans, who are determined to maintain the status quo, would have approved a past-deadline request from the democrat?
2
The trouble with using the handbook as a final decider is that the voters didn't read it.
3
"...provided no other candidate is similarly marked..."
If this vote was credited to the candidate for governor, then it goes to the democrat.
Otherwise, throw it out as an overvote.
This is not complicated.
3
Dueling pistols at twentty paces at least has a rational basis.
2
What is being missed here is that there are probably many other contestable ballots that should be revisited if this one is permitted. As for the ballot in question, you can draw many conclusions about what the voter intended. Putting a mark by both names, even if different, creates uncertainty. That is where the line must be drawn.
3
Based on Virginia's state handbook:
The state handbook reads, “If there are identical marks for two or more candidates, clarified by an additional mark or marks that appear to indicate support, the ballot shall be counted as a vote for the candidate with the additional, clarifying marks.”
Therefore if the ballot is to be counted the vote would be for Simonds.
5
AZ uses a game of chance to decide tie votes. Show Low was decided that way, so VA solution is not strange.
1
Obviously the voter never took an SAT test. It could easily be interpreted any way you want. The voter crossed off his vote for Governor, does that mean they really did not mean to vote for any candidate?
I can't wait to see what develops from the film canister chosen - not sure I trust that method. They should employ the services of LOTTO? Even numbered ball Democrat and ODD (of course) ball Republican. Or better yet, lets just change Democracy for a Lottocracy.
1
Ballot instructions say to color in the little oval. Any voter unable this five-word instruction is not intelligent enough to vote in the election. Ballot disallowed.
3
The guy voted straight Republican. Period.
Theatre of the absurd. That mark indicates this ballot was cast for MY candidate. No, it indicates the ballot was cast for MY candidate. Your guy. My guy. Tomato. Tomahtoe. Let's call the whole thing off.
1
The article quotes a part of section (5) of the handbook "If there are identical marks...clarified by an additional mark...that appears to indicate support..." Section 5 starts off with "Any ballot which is marked for more than one candidate for the office shall be deemed an overvote and no vote shall be counted except as provided in this section." Since the "additional mark" is on Simond's oval, it could only be interpreted as a vote for Simond, under the quoted section, otherwise it shall be deemed an overvote.
However, Section (8) would appear to be more hopeful for Yancey, as it reads "(8) Any ballot that has any mark, as above, in the target area or candidate area for one candidate, and on which other marks in the target areas or candidate areas for any other candidates have been partially erased, scratched out, or otherwise obliterated, shall be counted as a vote for the candidate for which the mark was not erased, scratched out, or otherwise obliterated, provided no other candidate is similarly marked. "
1
Clearly the intent can't be determined. The Dem wins... Unless the judges are Republicans then the GrOP wins.
2
Publishing this ballot is a great public service, and counting it as a vote for either candidate would completely destroy the value of that service. The ballot needs to be thrown out and every voter needs to get the message: 1) read the instructions and fill in your ballot correctly. 2) check your ballot before you file it and if you screwed up, ask for another one and fill it in correctly. 3) if you are too stupid to follow the instructions and fill in your ballot correctly, your votes doesn't count PERIOD.
America is a hugely complicated project. At a bare minimum, the people that run it, voters, should be expected to carry out the simple project of filling in a ballot correctly.
3
During the recount, the REPUBLICAN election official charged with overseeing the recount agreed that the ballot was invalid. It was only after the vote total was determined, and the Repbulicans realized that one vote made all the difference, that they came back screaming for a "do over". There was absolutely NO excuse for the court to even agree to take up the case. The count was over, it was agreed to by the proper officials of BOTH parties, that's it. End of story. Everything after that is pure election theft.
17
It looks like the voter began their vote by incorrectly using an X to vote for the governor. Realizing that, they then filled in the bubble to cover the X. By the time they got to the House race they filled in the bubble for the Democrat by mistake. To correct it they used one line to show they wanted that vote discounted. They only used one line instead of Xing it out because their governor vote had an X they tried to cover. I'm a Democrat, but this looks like a vote for Yancey.
Let's not call it a "slash." Let's call it a "stroke." And then let's read the rule:
“If there are identical marks for two or more candidates, clarified by an additional mark or marks that appear to indicate support, the ballot shall be counted as a vote for the candidate with the additional, clarifying marks.”
The stroke clarifies support for the Democrat because she has the additional clarifying mark. That is, if you are going to count it at all. The correct decision would be to throw it out.
2
The ballot should not be counted. Trying to read the mind of this voter and infer anything is a ridiculous exercise.
9
I would be interested to know the party registrations of the judges. Over the past year cases reported in NYT appear to show that this matters when the outcome is of political importance.
4
The two candidates should each serve one year of the two year term. Let them flip a coin to see who goes first.
7
I love this solution. Serves all of them right.
When the disputed ballots favor a Democrat the solution is to throw out the disputed ballot. If the disputed ballot favors a Republican, then they want to look at the voters intent.
7
(1) The ballot says vote for only one. If you vote for two, your ballot should be thrown out.
(2)Why the state guide would say “If there are identical marks for two or more candidates, clarified by an additional mark or marks that appear to indicate support, the ballot shall be counted as a vote for the candidate with the additional, clarifying marks.” is hard to fathom. It only invites (3).
(3) Why the additional mark would count as rejection of one candidate but as endorsement of another can be fathomed--partisanship. GO BACK TO (1)!
5
I know this is shallow but, never trust a politician with a come over. Seriously, learn to grow bald gracefully. It really is liberating and the voting public will love it.
1
Was this an absentee vote? If not why is Virginia still using punch cards instead of computers during elections?
1
This is not a punch card. It is a paper ballot, marked my filling in bubbles. Just like on an SAT test or other scanned document.
2
Looking at the instructions at the top of the ballot. The solution is simple. Since the oval is filled in for BOTH candidates, count one vote for each candidate. The instructions do not say: Vote for only one candidate for each office.
1
There is a simple solution to all of this. If the person can read, he or she can check the appropriate name. Otherwise, it's an invalid ballot.
3
Obviously a spoiled ballot. If a voter can't be bothered to get a fresh one after they mess up, then they have removed themselves from consideration.
5
What about staging another election??
Is this allowed?
In other countries, they have runoffs - perhaps, a run off is required here??
That seems only fair rather than pulling a card out of a silver or even a golden jar.
Thought the same thing in Florida in 2000. However, it would result in a free-for-all. Many, many people on both sides who didn't vote the first time, would line up to do so. You'd have law enforcement at the front doors of the polling places to stop fights; officials from both parties outside, hoping to stop fraud. You'd have protesters for both sides, and the possibility of violence. This may be overstating what actually might happen, but the possibilities are endless--like this election, it seems.
I always thought there were two sets of rules for counting votes. One for Democrats and one for Republicans. Just like there are two sets of laws in this country. One for the poor and middle class and one for the wealthy.
Sessions just announced his support for debtors prisons, but only for the poor and middle class. Deadbeats like the thrice bankrupt Trump not only deserve a pass in Sessions eyes, they deserve a tax break and a handout.
Why even pretend there is one standard anymore when day in and day out we are given endless examples of how that simply isn't the case.
For decades now Republicans have shown that rules only apply to Democrats - period. And we all know it. So, why continue to pretend otherwise?
5
The ballot in question looks like a winner for the most obvious spoiled ballot of all time - if only all matters of judgement were so clear cut.
The state handbook reads, “If there are identical marks for two or more candidates, clarified by an additional mark or marks that appear to indicate support, the ballot shall be counted as a vote for the candidate with the additional, clarifying marks.”
Yes, but in this case the additional mark is claimed as one to appear to claim opposition, not support, so this section of the handbook is inoperable.
1) The intent of the voter cannot be gleaned from the information on this particular ballot. This is acerbated by a similar mark on the same voter's ballot for governor, which was counted, and exhibited a similar additional mark. This is an overvote.
Furthermore, on this ballot, the additional mark for Simmonds can just as easily be argued to mean 'count this one' as 'don't count this one', particularly in light of the similar marking for Governor.
2) The Democratic candidate should have been able to present ballots they believed needed adjudication by the court, if the Republican candidate was allowed to do so.
Washington State as a 90 page guidebook that governs how ballot marks should be interpreted: https://www.sos.wa.gov/_assets/elections/Statewide-Standards-on-What-is-...
Perhaps the good people of Virginia should have thought a bit more about all the variations.
Look, it was my vote, and clearly I didn't not mean to not cast my ballot for the Democratic Republican.
This this may be my bias speaking, but the mark doesn’t seem to be in support of a candidate. Obviously there could be some part of the law or book not highlighted, but given my reading, I lean toward not counting the ballot. It’s probably my bias speaking.
2
It should be possible to determine by microscope whether or not the apparent strikeover of the Simonds box occurred after the box was filled. That would confirm that it was intended as an "additional clarifying mark." The X cited by the Democratic advocates is not identical to the single stroke strikeover. The fact that all other votes were for Republicans makes it likely that the strikeover was intended to clarify - though it could have been clearer! Science should trump politics (in Global Warming, too!!!)
Looks like the voter crossed out the vote for the governor and for the rep is putting a check mark or tick mark.
Just looking at it - the vote should be thrown out...
As much as it pains me to concede, common sense would suggest that someone who voted (R) for all the other seats meant to vote (R) for the Member's seat.
Sad.
1
Yancey's name was most likely on each of the two "votes" in the silver pitcher, I put nothing past these Republicans. I am glad Simonds is fighting back.
The real question, at least to me, is how this ballot was ever accepted.
When voting using an optically scanned ballot, the ballot should be scanned before the voter leaves the polling place. A ballot with two circles filled in where only one is allowed, should fail this initial scan, and be returned to the voter to be fixed, or, better, destroyed and a new ballot issued.
41
And they certainly do scan it before you leave.
The crazy thing is that we, the voters, do the actual scanning ourselves, but it only gives of acknowledgement of a sheet up paper was input, I've complained every year at my precinct about how it doesn't confirm your vote when actually reading/counting.
This is what happens in Tarrant County, Texas. Any ballot that has more than one mark in any race is automatically rejected when it is run through the scanner.
1
What we all should have learned from Bush v. Gore is to keep the courts out of the voting process. The disputed ballot was ruled invalid by those responsible for evaluating it. That should be the end of it. Once the courts get involved... Well, eight years--a major, unnecessary war and a Great Recession--of George W. Bush says it all.
21
Made a mistake voting a few years ago, went to the officials & told them. They gave me a new ballot. I vote the old fashioned way, on election day, don't trust mail in stuff. Miss the days of pulling the lever, shutting the curtain & pulling the little brass levers.
3
If instead of putting in a ballot I wrote a letter explaining my vote, would you expect them to accept it as a ballot? Of course not. So the rules regarding what an acceptable ballot is need to be clear and followed accordingly. This should not be an accepted ballot.
10
The name of the voter is recorded somewhere. Why not ask the voter his or her intent? You can do that without making the voter's name public. Absent that, seems clear to me you discard the ballot.
Paperless, BTW, creates its own problems. With no paper trail, you can't easily check for errors and voter fraud (not that fraud is a real problem) or, more significantly, a system that has been hacked.
1
The issue with this election and ballot is that a bi-partisan team declared it spoiled and signed off on their decision. Then the observer for Mr. Yancey noticed that the GOP member of the team seemed uneasy with his decision, talked to him, and guided him through Mr. Yancey to the judges who decided this ballot and this ballot only, not the rest of spoiled ballots, should be judged anew. The similarities to Bush vs. Gore are that some ballots are more equal than others and that the GOP gets backsies.
16
I believe that it is time to reconsider the secret ballot. I want to be certain that not only my vote, but all of our votes, are counted as they are intended. Yeah yeah yeah, perhaps there is the intimidation thing, but all of our problems with the actual counting of the votes could be solved by ending the secret ballot.
Ending the secret ballot will not enable the public to verify the vote count when votes are counted in the darkness of cyberspace. We need to go back to counting ballots by hand at polling places (before the chain old custody is broken) with observers of all interested parties present.
6
This is nonsense. No secret ballots make intimidation and vote buying enforceable. The secret ballot works fine – if you cannot follow instructions and produce a clear, consistent ballot, your vote will not be counted. It's not difficult; at some point voters just have to accept some responsibility for their actions.
2
The more I look at that ballot, the more ambiguous it seems. I can discern plausible "intents" for either outcome. When the voter does not make their intent -their vote- crystal-clear, the ballot should be discarded. Anything else is not a vote but an interpretation.
35
The most disturbing aspect of this case is the Court's agreement to divine the voter's intent by inductive reasoning along party lines, i.e. inferring that choices in other races on the same ballot were sufficient evidence in this race.
14
One interpretation is that the voter was starting to cross out the bubble for Simonds.
But wait. The voter DID cross out the bubble for governer but voted for other GOPers.
My interpretation is this> The voter made an X for governor, then STARTED to make an X for Simonds for the Assembly seat and realized that he/she need to bubble instead of X. So, he/she went back and bubbled in the x for governor and bubbled in the start of the X for Simonds.
Sometime later when the votes were being counted a GOP operative bubbled in the bubble for Yancey. Then he/she pointed out the discrepancy.
2
Simply put, any ballot that shows more then one candidate checked off needs to be discarded.
If someone decides that they made a wrong choice then they need to bring that mistake to election officials, destroy the first ballot and request a new one.
However no ballot ever should be allowed that has questionable marks on it.
25
In my part of CT, we have paper ballots with bubbles to be filled in, scanned by the machine, and the paper ballot retained. The touch screen balloting machines are far too vulnerable to corruption and ensure that there is no trail to counter fraudulent programming. Even before the 2000 election, college students proved that the Diebold touch machines could be corrupted. Rather than thanking the students, Diebold tried to have them jailed because they showed how a back door could be used to alter election results. There must be a unified national system of standards that must be met by all voting machine manufacturers to ensure that machines cannot be corrupted and recounts cannot be prevented by a lack of a paper trail. Then let states choose which system(s) they wish to use.
3
This was a paper ballot, with bubbles fill in, optically scanned and retained for a recount. Just as you described in your first sentence.
1
I think that they need to follow whatever law dictates the counting of the ballot. Otherwise, in the future people will challenge every over vote based on this precedent. It seems to me that it seeks to allow one over-vote ballot to supersede those ballots singly marked.
6
It’s really sad that in the 21st century we still don’t have a federalized, computerized, simple, secure way for all US citizens to vote. Especially in the wealthiest nation on earth. And this is on purpose which makes it worse. You see, politicians and political parties benefit from the endless myriad of rules and regulations which differ from State to State. It makes it much easier for them to manipulate the system that way. It’s that simple.
8
A federalized, computerized, simple, secure ballot could be hacked. A localized system with data rolled up to state and then to the feds in national elections would be safer.
3
It would seem that the problem is in the acceptance of the vote in the first place.
If I was designing the system (and I spent my working career designing computer processing systems), I would take the voters sheet and run it through a pre-scanner which would then PRINT THE ACCEPTED BALLOT on the form. The voter would then have the option of submitting the ballot or getting a new one.
Only the scanner printing would count. And if the scanner prints machine readable and English language data, and there is a discrepancy (ran out of ink), only the English language printing would count.
8
That would be fantastic; we here in virginia only recently changed to these systems, up through 2014-2015 we still had the all electronic machines that were laughably easy to get into through wi-fi. Our current scanners do not verify your votes when you input the sheets, just that you entered a sheet - I've made a complaint every time about it. Also as a side note, I mismarked my ballot once, told the election officials so, and they took care of it like pros and gave me a fresh one.
1
The biggest issue and problem with the court ruling is that they took into consideration how the voter voted in the other elections on that ballot. Voting for different offices are independent events, and the court ruling doesn't recognize that principle by reasoning that since the voter selected Republicans for the other offices, that that information should be considered as relvant for determining the intent of the voter in the race in question.
This reasoning creates a new standard for evaluating voter intent where this is ambiguity; this is highly troubling and inappropriate. The court's application of a non-independence principle here should render their ruling void. Observers should not consider information not directly relvant to the voter's choice for one specific office, and votes for other office might of interest to political scientists and pundits, but it should not be of interest to vote counters.
32
Despite this contested election over one ballot it is important to note that our vote counting process has been outsourced to a handful of rightwing corporations that count our votes in secret on proprietary software. Is it a coincidence that statistical and pattern evidence from exit polls indicate that vote counts are being shifted to the right?
The hanging chad fiasco was maliciously engineered.
How to Rig an Election - The GOP Aims to Paint the Country Red
https://tinyurl.com/y9xx63f6
"In a 2007 Dan Rather exposé, "The Trouble with Touch Screens," seven whistleblowers at Sequoia charged that company executives had forced them to use inferior paper stock for ballots during the 2000 election. They had been instructed to misalign the chads on punch cards destined for the Democratic stronghold of Palm Beach County. 'My own personal opinion was the touchscreen-voting system wasn’t getting off the ground like they would hope,' said Greg Smith, a thirty-two-year Sequoia employee. 'So, I feel like they deliberately did all this to have problems with the paper ballots.'
"Such blockbuster allegations are perhaps unsurprising given the group of Beltway insiders who helped to pass the Help America Vote Act [a truly Orwellian name]. One central player was former Republican representative Bob Ney of Ohio, sentenced in 2006 to thirty months in prison for crimes connected with disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff—whose firm was paid at least $275,000 by Diebold.
[cont'd below]
30
[part 2]
"HAVA's impact has been huge, accelerating a deterioration of our electoral system that most Americans have yet to recognize, let alone understand. We are literally losing our ballot—the key physical proof of our power as citizens."
#DemocracyDemandsTransparentVoteCounting
#HandCountedBallotsNow!
24
For PA our rule is clear. If a voter fills in more than one oval for a given office, it is by law an 'overvote' and not to be counted. The voter can and must ask for a new ballot in order to correct such mistakes. If not, other votes on the ballot count, but not those for overvoted offices, even if one oval is crossed out.
In both 2012 and 2008 our precinct had perhaps a dozen ballots where a voter filled in the oval by Obama's name And the write-in oval where they also wrote in his name. While the voters' intents were clear, such overvotes do not count in PA.
49
I vote in SE PA and we have NO paper ballots, just a computerized voting machine. It is literally impossible to vote for two candidates for the same office. I am confused why Chester City has an entirely different system. (BTW I woiuld prefer paper ballots.)
1
It's handled by the county, and each can be different in PA.
This would be so much simpler if we would go to a paperless computerized ballot. Then Putin could just decide the winner for us, and we could get on with our lives.
87
I take your comment as satire. Paper ballots are the only reproducible vote count technology that we have.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2016/09/07/to_avoid_vote-coun...
It it seems to me that you cannot tell what this voter intended. Part of the reason is that we don’t know the order in which these marks were made. Therefore honoring his or her intent is meaningless. Instruction as to how to mark your ballot are given. While some deviation might be allowed if you can reasonably tell what is intended, when you cannot tell, the vote should not be valid. How much credit should we give to a voter who ignores simple rules designed to clearly express the intent. I would suggest not much. Any judge or panel of judges deciding what this voter meant is just making it up.
66
If you are a Republican trying to keep a Republican majority?
The ballot is "spoiled", but it's also pretty clear they intended to vote for the Republican. Interesting all the Democrats arguing against counting someones vote when it hurts their candidate.
4
And Republicans argue against counting someones vote when it hurts their candidate.
And I question your interpretation of their intent. I assert the voter is incompetent.
2
If Gillespie wasn't also crossed out, I would agree that it is pretty cut and dry. But it is.
3
It is also "interesting" that they first ruled the ballot void until they (Republicans) lost he recount. Then, and only then, did they say it was valid. Isn't that more "interesting"?
2
Regardless of the Election Board's guidelines, the Virginia Code declares that marks filling the bubble for two candidates voids that vote.
116
Good analysis, WaPo.
Thanks.
1
The the ballot is clearly a spoiled ballot. Two selections were made in the column specifically stating select one. In NYS, that ballot would have been rejected by the scanners, and the voter given the option of filling in another ballot. After 2000, why isn’t that the norm across the country?
115
Having looked at the VA Ballot Guide book it has numerous pages of examples and describes how to interpret the markings (none of which by the way mimic the ballot in question). A far simpler system would be to inform voters that they must make only a single bubble mark for the person they desire to vote for. If they make an error, they must ask for a new ballot. All ballots with over votes will not be counted.
47
If every vote should count as the lawyer says, why not give one vote each, as the voter appears to have done.
22
Why does there even need to be a handbook? It seems to me that there should be a far simpler standard: If there is any ambiguity whatsoever, throw out the ballot. Anyone incapable of properly voting, or at least asking for a new ballot after making a mistake, isn't intelligent enough for the rest of us to worry over.
93
But you may find ambiguity where I see none. New disputes.
Still, your thought that voters should be capable of voting clearly is reasonable.
Personally, I'm happy with Virginia. The votes were counted fairly; the public can observer the decision on the disputed ballot, and the whole episode may remind some that the fairness of elections is important.
The loudest accusations of "voter fraud" come now from Roy Moore, and the more we hear from him, the better. He is not a good poster boy for Republicans.
1
"Isn't Intelligent enough?" The right to vote requires citizenship and to be of a certain age. No measure of intelligence is required. If there was, we might well have different leadership. That aside, errors on a ballot may be indicators not of a lack of smarts but of neurological problems, perceptual or motor disorders. Whatever the cause of theses errors, the solution is simple: mis-marked ballots should not count, and that includes any and all requiring divining of intent.
2
Au contraire, Roy Moore is the perfect poster boy for republicans:
• Tartuffian
• sadistic
• oversexed and lies about it,
• hates LGBTs, Muslims, Blacks (Af-Am, Af-Af, Caribbean, Australian, Martian), Hispanics, immigrants, Jews (except for one insane Hassidic lawyer), atheists, liberals, freethinkers, freemasons, expensivemasons, even the odd Zoroastrian or two,
• mucho macho: boxer,
• gun-totin', open-carry at political rallies,
• stylishly equestrian: rides like part of the horse, and NO, you may not ask which part,
• shameless (effectively part of Tartuffian, but it bears repeating).
His picture should grace every Democratic election effort: "Here's my Republican opponent's brother-in-arms. Want grandchildren? Send him your teenage daughters. He'll won't let them abort, even if it kills them."
My kind of guy.
1
Vote as if your vote is the one that matters. Go out and vote because your vote could be the one that matters.
Stay home and your lack of vote matters. How amazing that we have this privilege and tragic that so few recognize the privilege.
38
The only problem is that 2017 Republicans can't just accept losing. Look at Roy Moore. Look at Trump saying there will be riots if he loses.
Look at the IDC in New York. 8 Senators ran as Democrats and became Republicans as soon as they won. That means that there are 8 NY Senate districts which are majority Democrat but where there were NO DEMOCRATS ON THE BALLOT FOR SENATE.
And then they have the nerve to say "Hillary needs to go away".
Did she file a lawsuit to contest the election ? No.
69
So, you're saying that the Democratic voters in these 8 districts just voted for someone identified as a Democrat on the ballot, without knowing anything about the candidate and what he/she stood for? I guess those voters got just the representation they deserve.
Hi. Someone's identifying herself as a Dem on the ballot tells me plenty about the candidate and what she stands for.
1
What is the proper etiquette for a voter who realizes their ballot is not clearly marked? Do we do a good enough job educating people about what to do when you’ve made a mistake? It’s disheartening to think someone thought this ballot clearly and unambiguously represented their choices.
16
We have vote by mail in Oregon. Every once in a while, I fill in the wrong bubble, so I make a BIG X through it and write a note next to it, with an arrow, explaining my true intent. No one should have to guess at a vote and, if they do, you've thrown your vote away. Maybe it's a 10% chance that the mark through Ms. Simonds was a "check mark" or a 10% chance it was just a stray mark; if the intent was clear it wouldn't take a 3-judge panel, we could all judge for ourselves. Equal protection would require the 3-judges to review EVERY questionable ballot AND to double-check a sample of acceptable ones to be sure they're counted correctly. In an ideal universe where time stretches to infinity and judges operate at lightning speed, that could work. If not ALL of the thousands of disallowed ballots are given the same hours of argument in front of a judge, equal protection is violated. I'd say the same if it was a Republican denied his or her right to take office. Throw out the silly thing and let's be citizens instead of combatants.
44
The WA mail-in ballot tells us quite specifically how to correct an error. I would be surprised if the OR mail-in ballot is not similarly specific.
It appears VA does not include such instructions.
.
9
The following Times article points out why vote by mail is a bad idea. Most states run their vote by mail ballots through optical-scan machines (another source of potential fraud).
Error and Fraud at Issue as Absentee Voting Rises
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/us/politics/as-more-vote-by-mail-fault...
“Votes cast by mail are less likely to be counted, more likely to be compromised and more likely to be contested than those cast in a voting booth, statistics show. Election officials reject almost 2 percent of ballots cast by mail, double the rate for in-person voting.”
“The trend will probably result in more uncounted votes, and it increases the potential for fraud. While fraud in voting by mail is far less common than innocent errors, it is vastly more prevalent than the in-person voting fraud that has attracted far more attention, election administrators say.”
Judge Richard A. Posner, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit: “Absentee voting is to voting in person as a take-home exam is to a proctored one.”
I do disagree with the following:
“Voting in person is more reliable, particularly since election administrators made improvements to voting equipment after the 2000 presidential election.”
The so-called improvements gave us electronic voting machines where, as Professor Gerken points out at the end of the article, vote counts can be manipulated (and exit polls indicate that vote counts are being shifted to the right).
7
Not directly relevant perhaps, but the ballot scanners used in Boston automatically reject ballots with over-votes when the voter attempts to deposit them, right then and there. (This is a practical concern here because some positions, such as at large city councillors, allow for more than one candidate to be voted for.) This gives the voter the opportunity to get a fresh ballot that can be marked unambiguously.
62
Same in my state. The voter puts the ballot into the scanner, and if it rejects it, the voter gets a chance to start over.
2
It's clearly a "spoiled vote" as it has a clear choice and then an alteration. It's invalid. Perhaps an electoral voting education programme would help people understand that they should consider what they are doing in the most important choices most will ever make.
49
Bush v Gore was a one time, non precedent setting Supreme Court event. This was clearly stated in the ruling. If this Virginia case winds it's way to the Supreme Court, they may issue another one time non precedent ruling once again! Why can't this country vote straight?
Let automatic registration and vote by mail, or centrally located drop boxes, And audit of all elections begin!
8
The self-serving arguments from both Republicans and Democrats put to one side, what's missing from this mess is the extraordinarily simple inclusion of a statement on the ballot paper: "If you make a mistake on your ballot, return it to the electoral polling booth staff and request another."
120
This is what we do in Ohio. If the voter does not want to get a new ballot we explain that the double marked individual vote will not be counted.
29
Walk me through this: “The state handbook reads, ‘If there are identical marks for two or more candidates, clarified by an additional mark or marks that appear to indicate support, the ballot shall be counted as a vote for the candidate with the additional, clarifying marks.’ “ That strikes me as controlling language.
12
If you want to be literal there are several problems with the application of the guideline to this vote: (1) it requires "identical marks for two or more candidates". The marks for them Dem and Repub are not identical. If you look closely there is something additional in the Repub circle which looks like an X in addition to filling in the bubble. So the marks for the two candidates are not identical. (2) the "additional mark" here does not indicate "support". The argument put forth is that the additional mark is a strike through the Dem vote that show intent to cancel that vote, not support it. So that is not a "mark or marks that appear to indicate support". (3) the VA guidelines say "the ballot should be counted as a vote for the candidate with the additional, clarifying marks". The vote for the Dem is the one with the "additional, clarifying marks" so it should only be counted as a vote for the Dem since that is the vote that has the "additional, clarifying marks" associated with it.
1
Right. except here the additional marks were on SIMOND's name, and the Republicans argue that the marks show non-support. the rule does not contemplate such marks. therefore, there is no additional mark indicating support for Yancey. this is what the Democrats hopefully should be arguing. plain language of the law must govern. Hoist the Scalia-acolytes on their own petard.
3
OK, if that's controlling language, this clause can only be interpreted as a vote for Shelly A. Simonds, as both ovals are filled in, and only Shelly A. Simonds's oval has an additional mark. Whether such an interpretation is valid would hinge upon whether the additional mark appears to indicate support. Under no circumstance can this clause provide support for David E. Yancey, as his oval does not have an additional mark. [There is a little smudge to the lower right of his oval, but it's hardly of a size that would qualify it as an _additional_ mark; the oval may not have been accurately inscribed when completely filled in.]
1
All I can say about this episode is that your vote counts. To all of you who did not vote for whatever reason, but could have voted, you could have made a difference either way.
25
Imagine, just IMAGINE if a Republican lawyer working for a Republican candidate went to a panel of 3 judges appointed by Republican presidents and got this vote counted.
Donald Trump would crash the internet with twitter outrage.
A coin toss to determine the winner should be unconstitutional. Either way the coin flip goes, 11,000+ people will be disenfranchised because their candidate did not lose but did not get seated either. A re vote is the only way to go.
18
Consider the number of voters who are effectively disenfranchised by gerrymandering. Virginia ranks about 6th worst in that category (see Gerrymandering in America)
1
Tempest in a teapot. The judge certified the results. Go find something else to rouse the rabble about.
6
Whom do you define as "the rabble"?