How to spoil your ballot

[kaberett]

There's a widely misreported -- or at least misleadingly reported -- high-profile news story about last week's UK elections, in which a Tory ended up winning by a single vote... that consisted of a ballot that was not traditionally marked. I've spent a fair amount of time explaining to a fair few people over the past few days that the Returning Officer in this instance made exactly the correct decision, so here's the overview, in a nice neat central location. For context, a lot of my misspent youth involved hanging out at counts until 3 in the morning as a party-political observer, where my principal role was to ensure that no votes went into the wrong pile, and as such that any ambiguous votes were set aside for further discussion.

So. Broadly, in the UK, ballots are spoiled if (1) the caster is uniquely identifiable from the ballot paper alone (e.g. in Cambridge there's this one guy who always writes the same THE MONARCHY IS RACIST essay on his ballot paper, which wouldn't *necessarily* be enough to spoil his ballot *except* that he *also* has that same essay up in posters in his front window) (but signing the ballot paper, or writing your name on it, also count), or (2) there is no clear mark next to a single candidate.

In general, the way this works is that you do your absolute best to count the vote if there is any indication at all that a single candidate was marked out or preferred, in order to avoid the failure mode where you end up *not* counting votes because you don't like them.

So, for example, if someone draws a frowny face next to every candidate but one -- the candidate without a frowny face gets the vote. If you fill out your ballot paper as if you're voting under STV then the person who you wrote "1" next to (provided you only wrote one 1) gets your vote. If you underline one name only on your ballot paper, that candidate gets your vote -- and so on.

This is all extremely well established in precedent; for what it's worth every time there is A Major Election I tend to write up a post explaining all of this stuff. In general, there's a few spoils per ballot box, but most of them are ballot papers that are simply left blank; in simple cases (like somebody marking their ballot paper with a tick rather than a cross next to a single candidate) then if all the party-political observers agree unanimously the teller will just place the ballot paper in the obviously appropriate pile; if it gets much more complex than that the Returning Officer gets involved to make a final determination based on precedent and case law, though the amount anyone's willing to argue about it often depends on how close the vote is (because a lot of counts start at ~11pm, once the ballot boxes have had time to make it to wherever the count is being held, and then you just keep going until it's all over -- which, if there are recounts involved, can take A Very Long Time).

In this instance, if nothing else had been written on the paper, an arrow pointing at a candidate's name would be interpreted like a tick next to that candidate's name -- "this one". It's true that in this instance the intent of the scrawled "Brexit" is unclear, but given that the aim is to count as many votes as reasonably possible, and given that the arrow wasn't labelled e.g. "anyone but him" (at which point the ballot *would* be considered to not contain any statement of clear preference), I think the right call was made here.

If it wasn't what the voter intended then that's a pity, and hopefully having seen the national attention a bunch of people will do more research into how to effectively spoil ballots -- because the decision made is absolutely what would reasonably be expected by someone who had looked up how this one goes, and consistency in interpretation across electoral areas and through time is really important.

PS EU national resident in the UK? British citizen who moved abroad less that 15 years ago? REGISTER TO VOTE IN THE EUROS. You've got until tomorrow.

Comments

[jack]

...oh. Yes, I saw a report saying "due to the word brexit", and thought, that was a real stretch: in that case, you'd know what you probably meant, but asking returning officers to judge which policy goes best with which party sounds like a judgement call threatening to go too far and be too subject to differing opinions. But there was an arrow pointing right at the candidate? Then I'm outraged the other way, how can people write an outraged article and leave out the main part? :(

I acknowledge it could have been the reverse, meaning "anything but them", but I agree that's less likely.

I should have had more faith: I know the procedure for counting ballots is really good, and I know headlines are often outright false, but I was worried the system had started to be undermined (as many people try to do :()

[kaberett]

<3

The media is doing a REALLY GODO JOB of being incredibly the fuck misleading and outrage-generating on this one. I am glad my posting about it was useful to you!

[aldabra]

I thought the point about the voter not being identifiable was to prevent voter intimidation? If I'm instructed to vote by drawing an arrow and scrawling "Brexit" that means the people observing the vote can confirm whether I've done that or not from the existence of such a paper, which will be brought to their attention if it exists. It's not enough that I'm not identifiable by the returning officer; I have to not be identifiable by anyone who is in a position to intimidate me and also be present at the count.

[kaberett]

I think that as relates to this:
- that would not, I think, be a probable way for someone to Be Instructed To Vote, because they'd only have to fuck it up a bit to plausibly deniably have the vote discounted
- in order for this to be effective or worthwhile you'd have to be pushing for A Lot of unique spoils that you could then keep track of
- and all of this would need to be organised alongside an actual election campaign, in conspiracy with a significant chunk of the (vetted) observers in the room

... which are I think the kind of factors that get taken into account here? "Is this potentially uniquely identifiable beyond reasonable doubt" is absolutely one of the questions the RO will be considering with respect to whether to count any particular ballot marked in non-traditional fashion.

[highlyeccentric]

... wow, the UK is SUPER lenient on informal ballots!

If you do anything other than EXACTLY what you are supposed to do on an Australian ballot you've spoiled it. And exactly what you're supposed to do is different between house and senate, and federal and state elections. So in NSW for the lower house you must place a 1 in *at least one* box (but could be as many as there are boxes), but for federal lower house you must number all the candidates in order of preference. Every federal election in NSW there are informal (ie spoiled) ballots that consist of 'someone followed the nsw state ballot rules'. There's been some effort to standardise the upper house ballot systems, but it's still not EXACTLY consistent.

And if you write anything else on the form, anything at all, your ballot is out.

Mind if I link to this in next week's link post, I am elections geek and I'm sure I know plenty of people who are also elections geek.

[kaberett]

Yep please by all means feel free to link!

And also good grief your system sounds... terrifying and possibly terrible in this specific respect.

[highlyeccentric]

On further investigation it looks like I've misinterpreted 'if you do this your ballot may be spoiled' as 'WILL BE' and they do take intention of the voter into account, but it is more strict (not just 'a mark', you have to enter 'a lawful numbering sequence') in order to deal with preferential voting.

Having looked at the ballot paper formality guidelines now it seems like there's a wide gap between what we get taught in civics class (eg: if you make a mistake on your ballot, ask for a new one, don't cross it out) and what they'll actually accept.

[sporky_rat]

In the State of Mississippi, if the electronic ballots are down or your county doesn't do electronic ballots, you are required to darken the bubble next to the candidate you wish to vote for with a Number Two Pencil, usually tied to the small table behind the screen. Tied and packing taped and pretty sure they'd chain the sucker if they could.
You don't get your sticker if you walk off with the Pencil. Those ladies get Quite Upset about it.

Anything other than the darkened bubble is a spoiled ballot.
(If someone can't write for accessibility reasons or can't read, a poll worker goes with them and does the reading and writing for them. They're under oath to be completely impartial.)

[kaberett]

yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah in the UK all votes (*all of them*) are still counted, on paper, by hand.

I am really deeply weirded out by Electronic Voting on important topics.

[batrachian]

To quote jdn:

i do not trust computers. i have seen the code that runs our country's financial system. i have seen how the computer systems that store money are upkept & maintained. i am beginning to believe that gold bullion & a shotgun is a safer & more secure option.

[cadenzamuse]

Our state is electronic voting, but once you've made your vote before you cast your ballot, it prints a paper receipt that you can visually confirm is correct before casting (and it keeps all the receipts). I feel like that's the best combo I've encountered of "easy to use computer technology" with "safety of paper ballot."

[catyak]

I could live with that, I think, although you could probably nudge things a bit without getting a manual recount using the receipts, useful if it's close and your side has access to the system. There's nothing to say that what it puts in the electronic tally matches what's in on the receipt.

What worries me most about the electronic voting machines is that they're proprietary and the owner of one of the companies was on record as saying he'd deliver the vote for one party. Open-source, properly audited before and after the poll, in the presence of a nominated rep for each candidate (or party), with logging to a separate machine, is the only way to go to prevent that. OK, someone might find a hack but hopefully it would be fixed before use and if not, at least people could see why they might need to re-run things.

I like the UK's simple approach to things, but I've also had to deal with a US ballot paper so I can see why that might not work so well. Vote for more positions, get less overall security and traceability. I'm not sure what happens in the US if you turn up to vote and discover that you already have. I know how it's handled in the UK.

[cadenzamuse]

Yeah, I definitely think open source + audits is the way to go, but I do at least feel like having a paper trail for audit is a start.

I wish I knew what happens in the US if you find out someone has voted in your name. I have had to vote a provisional ballot before, because I thought I had changed my voter registration when I moved and I hadn't, and I know they only bother to check and count those if things are tight.

[archangelbeth]

How interesting that Being Identifiable on the ballot spoils it -- I mean, if it also included "and this is how I want to vote," wouldn't that be sort-of valid?

...I have no idea how weird votes would go in this location; they're pretty much "mark the bubble like a multiple-choice test question and stick it in the reader-machine."

(Sounds like going and casting votes as clearly as possible is the solution to people-one-is-not-pleased-with winning via a single vote. >_> )

...why would anyone WANT to spoil a vote? D:O

[naath]

a tick is 'I read the instructions wrong', an essay is 'I hate all of you and want the candidate/their representatives to read why'.

[archangelbeth]

...someone besides the voting-supervisors would read the essay? O_o

[kaberett]

Ah! Yes.

So.

The way this one works is, in the count hall, people present include:

• the Returning Officer (impartial effectively civil-servant)
  
• "tellers", the people actually performing the count (ditto, and who are allowed to touch the ballot papers)
  
• party representatives (i.e. the party-political bureaucrats who are Making Executive Decisions for the party, liaising with candidates, in charge of the party-political observers, etc)
  
• the actual candidates from each party (usually, though if they were running just to make a point and have zero expectation of winning they'll sometimes just go to bed)
  
• party-political observers (from each party as can be bothered, so up to ~5 per ward but more typically 2-4 per ward i.e. electoral district), who watch the people performing the count to ensure that each ballot ends up in the correct pile, and that each bundle of fifty votes actually contains fifty votes (in that you're less likely to have errors if you've got 5-6 people watching like a hawk and duplicating counting, which hopefully makes everything run more quickly and smoothly IN ADDITION to preventing perceptions or realities of bias)
  
• neutral observers from the Electoral Commission
  
• Some Journalists, Probably (but they're usually up in a gallery where they get a broad overview but can't actually see specifics of any of the ballots)

Cambridge, which is where I've done this, has 14 electoral wards. During counts, each ward typically has one table with two tellers at it, processing one ballot box at a time. You will also at each such table have 2-4 party-political observers, who may or may not be the candidate, and if they're not the candidates you'll probably have a candidate pacing as well. (Not all wards get counted at the same time, depending on how long it takes to get all the ballot boxes in from polling stations and verified). Floating around the room you'll also have the party rep, politically neutral support staff, and the Returning Officer and their floating team.

When a teller picks up a ballot paper, unfolds it, and sorts it into the appropriate pile, they do so in such a way that every single party political observer can clearly see the mark made on the ballot. If they pick up two sheets at once by accident and don't notice, an observer will sing out and require that they be separated. If there's any ambiguity at all about the mark on the paper, it will in the first instance be noted by both the tellers and the party-political observers and set to one side to be considered in more detail Later (at this point, that's around 5 people who've seen it already).

Once the first pass has been made through the ballot boxes, unambiguous votes are bundled up (generally into stacks of 50). At this stage any ambiguous votes will get discussed in the first instance by the tellers and party-political observers: if it's simply the case that the ballot was marked with a single tick rather than a single cross, or no marks at all were made on the ballot paper, there's no need to involve anyone more senior, unless someone is being a right arse (because at this point all they're achieving is delaying proceedings to no useful purpose, when it's already gone midnight and many of the people in the room have been up since 5am).

If it's even a wee bit more complicated, party-political observers will call their party representatives over. If party representatives in consultation with their candidates aren't willing to go "yeah, that's a clear spoil with no clear preference marked" (unanimously -- and at this point that's another 4-10 people who've seen the ballot, though it's still the case that only the tellers are allowed to touch the paper), you get the Returning Officer involved to make a final determination, which can take Some Time. During this process, floating observers from the Electoral Commission might have swung by, and if it's a particularly entertaining spoil party-political observers are likely to have called over their colleagues having a lull in a different ward to have a laugh. (Again, it's gone midnight, a lot of us have been up and largely on our feet since 5am, we're going to be keeping going for another couple of hours and then after that we're all going to pile into someone's living room for the afterparty.)

So: no, it's not that someone besides the voting supervisors will read the essay -- it's just that the voting supervisors consist of a wide array of people, to the point that an essay on a ballot paper is likely to be read or at least skimmed by getting on for 20 people (including candidates, party representatives, and politically neutral observers) even if it's not sufficiently amusing that others get called over Just To Have A Look. Basically the only people in the hall who don't have the option of having a gander are the journalists.

tl;dr the electoral process in the UK has a really kind of impressive amount of oversight at all levels and I feel very strongly about it. <3 This summary's not necessarily entirely accurate, not least because it has actually been about a decade since I was active in the process, but I think it gives the flavour!

[archangelbeth]

The candidates are watching the count??? O_O

Lords, I'm not even sure the candidates would be allowed in the same building as the count, honestly. (Okay, from something I found, maybe they sometimes are -- but they have to stay behind the line with any other "general public"!)

Definitely a lot more involved than what I'd be used to. Okay, I gotta go search out our stuff... It's city-by-city here, at least. (Which means that someone trying to mess with the ballot machines would... probably have issues.)

55% optical scanners (with hand-counting of anything the machine barfs on), 45% hand-count. Hand-counts are generally 4-person teams, a moderator, and a clerk (hopefully!). Unclear ballots get voted on by the teams after the moderator explains the unclarity...

Anyway, according to http://www.wheresthepaper.org/Tobi_PaperBallotElecAdminBasics_July19_07.pdf

Must run. Computer swearing it's running out of room. -_-

[damerell]

Besides what kaberett has written:

The party-political observers also do "tallying". Votes from more than one ballot box are combined into the result from one ward. If you want to know how people voted at a higher geographic resolution than per-ward, the only thing you can do is watch as the votes are tipped out of each ballot box and the initial count just to make sure there's the correct number of ballot papers is made, marking off on a "tally sheet" the votes cast for each party.

Another check on the correctness is these totals. If 26 Labour votes end up in a bundle of nominally 25, the total once all the bundles are made up will be one vote short. Hence a hypothetic malicious teller would have to also be making a like number of short bundles with 24 votes in them.

[passingbuzzards]

this is so interesting (and baffling, from an american perspective)! i feel like "nationwide scantron testing nightmare" is probably an accurate depiction of how our federal elections work

though: having looked into the matter as a result of this post it does appear that the colorado revised statutes are similar in their essentials—surprising, considering that this is also the state that threw out my ballot in the 2014 senatorial election on the basis of my signature not matching my voter registration, even though i signed my ballot and my registration maybe 30 seconds apart!

[kaberett]

huh! Thank you for the international comparative study, I am delighted. :D

[rydra_wong]

Relevant thread re: the apparently recurrent topic of "does this drawing of a penis on the ballot paper indicate a preference":

https://rydra-wong.dreamwidth.org/507610.html?thread=5644250#cmt5644250

[kaberett]

yupppp