Ballot reforms unlikely to help voters who think outside the oval

If you can’t follow a simple direction, should you be allowed to even vote?

Here’s the thing. This is not a system where folks who “can’t follow a simple direction” are coddled. If a ballot is so screwed up by the voter that the machine can’t “score” the vote, that vote won’t be counted. So almost all of the time, people who believe voters who can’t follow rules shouldn’t vote, will get their way.

Unless the difference between two candidates is so close that a manual recount is triggered. Then, even voters who are less than perfect get their say.

Why can’t the machines do an on-site rejection? i.e., if there is an overvote, the machine rejects the ballot, the voter is given a new one and told to try again. That way the issue is taken care right away instead of weeks/months later.

During the the recount, the count of the ballots that weren’t contested was virtually identical to that reported by the machines. So we need to use the machines to our advantage. They can anonymously look at the ballot and make a decision as to the “goodness” of it.

I had the opportunity to ask a county auditor about his. He said the scanning machine will pop the ballot back out in the case of an over vote on any particular race (not on under votes) and in these cases an election judge is supposed to come over and ask the voter if they want to do it over. He said in some cases the voter declines to do it over, and the judge punches a button to override, and the ballot goes through any way. In these cases, all votes for other races are counted – just the vote for the race where more than one candidate was indicated is not counted.

I also had the chance to listen as the auditor and other election officials talked about votes other than filled in ovals that the machine picked up. In cases where a stray mark is inside one oval but another oval is filled in solidly, the machine picked up as an over vote. In cases where an x was put in the oval, the machine picked up without a problem.

Machines can’t pick up circled names, and they also don’t pick up where voters try to “complete an arrow”. We used to have that kind of vote indicator, and other states like Wisconsin still do. This is where an arrow pointing to the candidate’s name must have its middle section filled in. The opti-scan ballots have markings down the side that some confused voters filled in as though they were the arrow type. The canvassing board members gave those votes to candidates whose names were opposite.

Thanks for the reply. Somehow I got the impression that the machine still just took overvotes without rejecting it. I never saw it explicitly state anywhere, but I think I concluded it when looking at samples of the various contested ballots – some of which had 2 or more marks that I figured the machine would have most certainly spotted.

So I’m guessing what could have happened would be this. The voter overvotes, the machine rejects it, the voter declines a new ballot, the election judge overrides it and then the ballot ends up in the machine waiting for one or both sides to argue that the vote is for them when in fact the voter did not vote for either. If that is the case, then that is problematic.

Mr. Steller: You are using the word “nonplussed” incorrectly in your article. It does not mean “unconcerned.” It means “utterly perplexed or confused.” A writer (and your editors) should know that. Look it up.

Now I know the true meaning of “nonplussed,” Francis Gorman, thanks to you. I changed the word in the post to “unenthusiastic,” which is nearest the meaning i had in mind.

I can’t speak for our editing team, but I read “A Clockwork Orange” at an impressionable age and may have had something like “doubleplusgood” in mind when i misused “nonplussed.” (I have not looked up doubleplusgood so am not sure of the spelling, spacing or punctuation.)