How to spoil your ballot
May. 6th, 2019 10:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaberettThere'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.
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.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-05-06 12:42 pm (UTC)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.)
(no subject)
Date: 2019-05-06 02:08 pm (UTC)I am really deeply weirded out by Electronic Voting on important topics.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-05-06 03:14 pm (UTC)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.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-05-06 06:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-05-06 10:17 pm (UTC)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.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-05-07 03:15 am (UTC)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.