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 :()

[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.

[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.

[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.)

[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

[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!

[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