"Al" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
[EMAIL PROTECTED]">news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> Note that if a voter figured out that he or
> she made mistake during the voting process and
> got a new ballot, the old ballot
> goes into the discard pile. As it
> turns out a large majority of the 19,000
> discards consist of discards from folks who got
> to vote again. Very few are "absolute"
> discards.
>
> This fact has been reported, but barely.
>
> From the state of confusion
> Al
In many jurisdictions an overvote (or undervote) for one
race doesn't invalidate the entire ballot--only the vote for
that race. Thus, if a ballot showed an overvote for president
but valid votes for other offices or propositions, only the
presidential vote is discarded. This would be consistent
with the reports in the papers that 19,000 ballots in Palm
Beach County had their presidential picks invalidated for
overvoting compared to 3,000 ballots for senatorial picks.
If ballots were tossed into a discard pile, I cannot see how
they would have been able to distinguish between the two.
Perhaps the reason that "fact" had been only barely reported
was because it was in error? Or perhaps things are done
differently in Florida than elsewhere? I take it from your
e-mail address that you know more about Florida than I.
--Robert Chung
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