Fundamental Voting Question - What's a Vote?

Great Debates
1

Two questions:

  1. What level of certainty should be required before ascertaining “voter intent”? Beyond reasonable doubt? 51%? 70%? I haven’t seen any discussion of such matters, though it would seem to impact greatly the dimpled chad issue.

  2. Suppose we have a host of ballots that clearly fail to meet this standard. There is still a likelihood that some of them intended to vote for the candidate. Example:

Candidate A wins by one vote. There are 10 undervote ballots outstanding. We can say with regard to each ballot that there is a 40% likelihood (to use a clearly unacceptable figure) that the voter meant to vote for Candidate A (and a 60% likelihood that no vote at all was intended). Looking at each ballot by itself, we can clearly not accept it as a vote. But looking as a whole, we can say that it is extrememly likely that three of these voters meant to vote for Candidate A, and that more voters intended to vote for Candidate A than intended to vote for Candidate B. What to do? This question would be even more interesting if the bar is raised for the level of conclusiveness required.

I personally would be inclined to the view that whatever a voter intended to do is irrelevent as long as he has not actually done so. The act of voting consists of a clear expression of preference, and a voter who has not done so has not voted, despite the fact that we know that there is a likelihood that he intended to do so. I wonder if there might be any disagreement with this.

2

The State of Texas allows any ‘clearly ascertainable intent’ of the voter to be tabulated, including dimpled ‘chads’ (this doesn’t mean all dimples are a clearly ascertainable intent, merely that dimpled chads CAN be a clearly ascertainable intent). Michigan, by contrast, allows only chads where at least two corners are detached to be tablulated as a vote; presumably the state legislature thought that something quite obvious should be needed before you ring it up. Illinois is somewhere in the middle, since in the court case cited by the Florida Supreme Court in its recent opinion in Palm Beach County Canvassing Board v. Harris, Illinois did not allow dimples, but did allow perforations in undetached chads.

Keep in mind the mechanics of voting using these cards: the card is inserted into the top of a device that has multiple pages of candidates and issues with guide holes for the stylus used to punch the card. You don’t actually SEE the card when you punch it. After making your selections, you then remove the card and procede to the ballot box, where it is then inserted. The chance that you, the voter, are going to be able to scan your ballot and see that your attempt to punch out any given chad has failed is pretty small. It isn’t like a Scantron™ form, where you can SEE that you haven’t colored in the circle, or a voting machine where you can SEE you didn’t pull the lever down.

Still, you do raise a good point in this sense: should votes be subject to subjective determinations? While I disparage Mr. Bush, for example, for his ingenuous attempt to convince the nation that manual recounts are less accurate than machine recounts per se, I do share his concern that, when subjectivity enters into play, you are allowing the possibility for results that may include votes arising out of partisan feelings, rather than objective, non-biased determinations. Perhaps the proper compromise is to do as Michigan and Illinois have done and set objectively determinable criteria for a vote to be tabulated, removing the subjectivity. You’d be hard pressed to say that a non-detached chad with a perforation in it isn’t an intended vote. :slight_smile:

3

IzzyR, even though we obviously have different political outlooks, I’m starting to love ya. Very good question and OP.

Let’s start at basics. I think that a starting definition of a “vote” should be a physical expression of a person’s intent to cast their support for a particular candidate. I think we have to use a pretty broad definition like this because in this country we have many different methods of voting. For example, I didn’t punch any pieces of paper, but I did “vote” for Gore by turning a lever in a voting booth.
Hence, a ballot with the chad punched out for Nader (let’s use him, in an attempt to remove partisanship) is considered a “vote” for Nader.

There is a problem with this, however. A fully punched-out chad in the Nader box may not indicate support for Nader. Two things may have happened. First, the punch for Nader could have been in error, and the voter doesn’t catch the error, or doesn’t know he can ask for a new ballot. Second, the voter may have intended to punch the chad for Nader, done so, then, while going through the rest of the ballot, remember a Nader TV commercial that really pissed him off. He decides he doesn’t want to support Nader, but decides that it is not worth it to get a new ballot, or does not realize he has the option of asking for a new ballot. In these two cases, we have the “physical expression”, but not the intent.

So, determining what is a vote is always subjective. We solve at least some of the subjectivity by making presumptions. The two primary presumptions are that a definite physical expression is a vote, and a lack of a definite physical expression is not a vote.

But what about in between these two points? Let’s look back at my experience with the voting machine in NYC. Suppose I turn that Gore lever, it moves over, but the machine doesn’t record it. Did I “vote”? I sure as hell think I did, and under the definition above, I did. In Florida’s case, what if I punch the card, and the chad didn’t fully detach?

Okies, I think we’re all agreed that partially detached chads should count. I mean, hell, we’re talking about paper. How many paper things have told you to tear along the perforated line, and when you did, you ended up ripping the paper?
But what about dimpled chads? What do they represent? I think there are three possible explanations for a dimpled chad. The first is that the voter was simply marking his place. Ya know, “I want to vote for the fifth guy on the list. Let me count them off with the stylus so I make sure I punch the right hole.” And, in the process, you make a dimple on one of the chads. The second is that the voter started to vote for someone, but change his mind. The final is that you intended to vote for someone, but either your physical weakness, lack of attention, or problem with the machine prevented the chad from being perforated.

All three are pretty valid explanations. How, then, do we determine “intent”? Again, we have to make presumptions. Any presumption is fair to my mind, if the presumptions are made in one of two ways: 1) the presumptions are agreed to before the vote, so that they are made without knowledge of how the presumption will affect the result; or 2) they are made at any time by a neutral arbiter (a judge/mediator/ Dalai Lama).
Personally, if I were that judge/mediator/reincarnated holy man, I would say that we cannot count dimpled chads. I would take a conservative approach and find that there was a physical expression, but not sufficient information to determine what was the intent behind that physical expression. However, my approach is definitely underinclusive. I believe that it is also valid to presume that people go to Presidential elections because they want to vote for President. If you make that presumption, than any physical expression on one of the presidential candidates’ chad is sufficient to count as a vote. This is potentially overinclusive. In a way, this presumption says that walking into the voting booth is part of the physical expression of intent.
In sum, we have to make presumptions under any system. We presume that people who don’t vote didn’t want to vote, even though they may not have been able to get off work, they suffer appendicitis on election day and can’t get to the polls, etc. All that really matters is that the presumptions are applied fairly without regard to how the presumption will affect the result.

Sua

4

Sua, while I am not a Judge, Legislator, nor an election official, and only in occasional fantasies a reincarnated holy man (note my username;)), I would venture to say that common sense is going to make 95% of any disputed ballots clear.

[li]In a fairly hotly contested election, such as this last one, the number of people who are going to go to the polls to vote for Proposition 3 and elect Cousin Ed Town Assessor and fail to vote for President (Governor, Senator, etc., whatever “high” race is on the ballot) is going to be minimal. Hence, any pseudovote (dimpled chad, partial mark on paper ballot, etc.) is likely to be intent to vote for that person. The likelihood that this is a person failing or unable to exert enough strength to completely punch out the chad, failing to take enough time to completely color in the little circle, etc., is substantially higher than the likelihood that he/she started to cast a vote for that person, stopped, and in effect said to himself, “They’re all losers; I won’t vote for anybody.”[/li]
[li]If a true vote (full hole, complete mark) and a pseudovote (dimpled chad, partial mark) occur for the same ticket, it’s likely that your “counting off” scenario or another similar event happened. So the true vote should be counted, and not considered a “double vote” due to the pseudovote.[/li]
[li]If two true votes occur and there is some other means to adduce which is valid, as for example the accounts of the people in Palm Beach County who realized they’d erroneously voted for Buchanan instead of Gore and were told to vote for Gore and circle that vote, well, this person is following (presumably) competent authority in casting a valid vote – to discount that vote as an invalid double vote because of the two punches, as a machine count would do, is completely contrary to the spirit of the law, even if it fits a technicality.[/li]
[li]For the handful of questionable ballots where no reasonable presumption can be made, the vote must be rejected. But they should not equal 2% of the national vote![/li]
While I can, like you, construct scenarios to explain anything, including the idea that the voter was so drunk that he hit the “vote the straight Democratic ticket” option when he intended to hit “vote the straight Republican ticket” – but the object here is not to determine voter intent beyond a shadow of a doubt, as one would criminal guilt, but rather to ascertain the probable intent of someone who obviously did have the intent of coming to the polls to cast a ballot with votes for one or more persons. In such a situation, I’d favor the construction that is most likely to give that voter the right to have cast a valid vote.

That’s not partisan; that’s simply calling for the right to vote to be honored. Questionable votes are, IMHO, valid votes. It’s not for us to decide the intent of the voter – but it’s proper to infer his intent from the evidence before us. Doing otherwise deprives him of his equal vote.

Your reaction?

5

My reaction is simple. Take the case to its ultimate example: you have a dead heat, with one ballot left. The ballot has some aspect to it that one person might interpret as an attempt to vote, another might not (quite apart from partisan aspects; assume the opinions are offered by people who don’t know what outcome would result from the decision). Do you or don’t you tally a vote on that basis? Remember, if you make a mistake EITHER WAY, the result is the ‘wrong’ guy wins.

Which is the more defensible mistake: 1) we tried to get it right by assuming the person intended to vote for a person, and got it wrong, or 2) we didn’t assume it was a vote because it wasn’t clear that it was a vote? As much as you hate to ‘disenfranchise’ people who have actually gone to the trouble of casting votes in an election, I think the more easily defended mistake is the latter. After all, it IS at some point incumbent upon the voter to manage to get it right.

If there is ANY lesson from this election, it is that a voting system that uses punched out chads to establish a vote is a poor system for ensuring that a person’s vote gets properly counted.

6

One example that comes to mind is a case where (according to some radio hosts) the vote counters came across a ballot that had been punched for Gore and also had a write-in vote for a cartoon character (Homer Simpson, IIRC). The vote counters decided that most likely the Gore vote was serious and the Simpson vote was a joke and counted it as a Gore vote. Personally, if I had to bet my life on this, I would think the likelihood is greater than 50% that they were right about the voter’s intention. But it is certainly not clear-cut. I think there are probably many examples of such scenarios, where it is likely but not conclusive that this or that dimple represents a vote.

DSYoungEsq,

I’m unclear about the Texas law. From what I’ve seen, it does say that the intent of the voter is enough even in the absence of perforations. But it also has rules about perforations (I think it requires two). If every dimple is to be considered a proof of voter intent, the first three (IIRC) clauses of the Texas law are completely redundent. So I am unsure about the manner in which the Texas law envisioned determining voter intent. (In any event, I am not among those who believe that the laws in Texas have an added significance due to the presence of Bush on the ticket).

I was told that there are specific instructions in the polling place that everyone should be carefull to check the ballots to make sure it is completely perforated.

SuaSponte,

I think there is a difference between desire to vote and intention to vote. In your example, even if we knew for sure that the person wanted to vote but suffered appendicitis etc., it would not count as a vote.

But I think this gets to the point that I was making. If a vote is defined as a “physical expression of a person’s intent to cast their support for a particular candidate”, then if that person has not expressed their intent it is not a vote, even if they truly had such intent. They had intent, but did not actually express it. The question would remain as to what level of conclusiveness is required to be considered a valid expression. But something could fall below this line and thus not constitute a vote, even if there is some degree of likelihood that the voter did indeed have intent. If such votes are not evenly distributed it could lead to anomalous results, as described in the OP.

7

Hmmm Izzy, you do a disservice to your thread when you begin to revert the discussion to rehashed arguments tossed out in the partisan brouhaha in Florida. Those of us who are truly impartial regarding the outcome of that situation have no doubt in our minds: reverse the situation, and everyone who is arguing A would be arguing Not-A (and vice versa) just as vehemently.

Texas’ law is easy to understand. It has two specific instances under which no subjective interpretation is allowed: chads with two or more detached corners and chads that are perforated. For those chads, the vote must be tallied; you can’t say that there is no ‘clearly ascertainable intent’. But the legislature also understood that there might be times when ‘clearly ascertainable intent’ would exist without either perforation or multiple detached corners. For those situations, they provide additional language to establish a vote. Specifically, dimples are a possible vote (you can’t declare them to be no vote per se) and anything else that shows ‘clearly ascertainable intent’ counts. For example, suppose I don’t insert my punch card into the machine; suppose instead I mark my punch card ballot with a pen, marking chads which I otherwise would punch out. Under Texas, during a manual recount, such a ballot would be tabulated, presumably.

Texas law has no more or less weight in this issue than the law of any other state; you’ll notice I also quoted both Michigan and Illinois law. I might point out that one of the FIRST persons to make reference to Texas law was James Baker, who asserted that TEXAS had STANDARDS for manual recounts, and therefor you couldn’t draw a parallel between Texas and Florida; this despite the fact that Mr. Gore would have cheerfully conceded to have the Florida manual recounts procede under Texas’ standards. :wink:

As for the issue of failing to properly detach chads, just because someone says, “pay attention and do it right” doesn’t make it EASY to do. And in the case of dimpled chads, you probably wouldn’t even know that your attempt to vote failed; they wouldn’t be as obvious as hanging or swinging door chads.

As I pointed out in another thread here, what this really boils down to is: which mistake do you make, counting a vote that wasn’t, or not counting a vote that was. I tend to agree with the proposition that it is better to err on the side of caution than on the side of over-assumption. Objective standards help assure this will be the case. If nothing else, the Florida result shows what some county elections officers have known for years: punch-card ballots are LOUSY at effectively recording the intent of voters.

8

I don’t think this is a particularly good point. For presumably simple tasks, or for tasks in which people normally assume problems don’t arise, most people don’t bother reading the instructions. Let’s look at it this way – do you think the people who did manage to completely perforate their chad only accomplished this task because they read the specific instructions, or that the only reason they completely perforated their chad is because they read the directions and therefore knew exactly what to do? In my own experience, I’ve never read the instructions for operating the voting machines I’ve used in all the jurisdictions I’ve voted in, but I think I’ve successfully voted each time.

I tossed in the bit about appendicitis as hyperbole, just to make the point that nothing about determining intent is wholly objective. The guy with appendicitis had the right to vote and was only held back from voting by illness. However, to make the election process possible, we presume that Appendicitis Boy didn’t want to vote and therefore don’t allow him the opportunity to vote when he gets better. This presumption is a complete fiction, but we all agree to it because otherwise the system would break down.
My overall point is that since the voters are wild cards in the equation, we have to make presumptions. Further, what is an “obvious” vote is only obvious when we apply certain presumptions. The question is what presumptions we apply. My position is that the nature of the presumptions do not matter, so long as they are reasonable and are not chosen so as to influence the result of the election.

Poly - I have absolutely no objections to the presumptions you would like to see applied in Florida. They are simply not the ones I would apply had my godlike powers not been lost in the mail. My presumptions try to attain a higher degree of certainty, and have the unfortunate effect of eliminating more votes than your presumptions. It’s a trade-off.

I do firmly disagree with you on the Buchanan-Gore double vote issue. With two valid votes, to chose between them is not making presumptions (which, in this case I define as rational criteria, however arbitrary, applied to determine what a vote is), but assumptions (in this case, essentially that a retired Jewish voter in Palm Beach who voted for Buchanan must have made a mistake.) When the objective evidence is the same (two wholly punched-out chads), any attempt to discern the voter’s intent means the discerner must apply their bias.
Gah, I’m starting to sound like a Republican. Not my intent, but while I do wish Gore wins, I think that we have to have a relatively strict standard for counting the votes.
Sua

9

You are quite right. I tried to do this in the OP (though the relevence to the current situation is obvious), and thought I was responding to your specific points afterwords. I shall try to be more careful.

I’m not one of the impartial ones. Few are. I do the best I can to see things impartially, but results may vary. But with issues such as this, it’s obvious that almost everyone is partial, so I think that should be taken for granted, and ideas treated on their merits alone.

But does Texas law declare that every dimpled ballot is an intent to vote? Or are there other factors which would distinguish some dimpled ballots from others in this regard?

10

Presumably, under Texas law, some dimples rate higher than others. But you can’t dismiss a dimple by reasoning that no dimple is a vote. As I recall, this mirrors what the circuit judge in Florida for Palm Beach County ruled when asked about the issue. “Consider the dimples,” he said. I do, every time I look at her smile… oops, I digress. :slight_smile:

11

As someone who votes using a punch card, let me see if I can clear up some misconceptions here.

Let me describe what the actual ballot looks like once you pull it out of the voting machine. All you can see on it is a whole bunch of teeny tiny eensie weensie numbers in columns, but not necessarily in evenly spaced rows, so it looks like just a mishmash of numbers spread out all over the place. I have 20/15 vision and I find it difficult to read the numbers, they’re so small and seemingly unorganized.

Now, unless you’ve memorized which number corresponds to which candidate and/or which proposition, you have no earthly way to tell if the stylus went through the hole you intended, or if it went through the hole at all, unless you stand there comparing holes (if you can visually find the missing numbers amongst the clutter) after you pull the ballot out, flipping through the pages of the book all over again (how many people actually do that??).

So now you’re looking at a card with dozens of itty bitty numbers with some random holes showing through, having no clue what they correspond to because there are no names or proposition numbers printed on that card. You run your hand across the back of it to see if you can feel any hanging chads and just like the machine would do when counting it you inadvertently flatten one of your chads, but you don’t realize that that’s what happened (perhaps your hands are rough or chapped and you don’t feel that teensy piece of paper rub across it). You’ve done everything you’re supposed to do. You checked for hanging chads and you looked to see if there were holes on your ballot and sure enough you see a bunch of them. But are all of the punched/intended ones actually showing through???

I’ll be damned if it still isn’t entirely possible that at least one of your votes (or intended votes) didn’t actually just press the paper down instead of poking all the way through it. Did you miss voting for certain offices or propositions because 2 pages stuck together when you were turning them? How could you tell if you did that just by looking at that basically blank card once it’s pulled out of the machine? So verifying that you’ve done it “right” is much more difficult than those of you who don’t use this antiquated method seem to believe. (And I’m growing weary of the mischaracterization of people who didn’t necessarily get the stylus all the way through as morons or too lazy to follow instructions properly.)

As for 3rd parties reading your ballot after you’ve turned it in and trying to determine what your intent was, don’t think I’m implying that because it’s hard to verify your own voting once that card’s been pulled out, that that means no one can ever tell how you intended to vote in certain circumstances. IIRC, the standards that Palm Beach adopted for counting dimpled chads as votes was whether or not there were multiple instances of dimpled chads on the ballot, indicating that the voter simply had difficulty pressing firmly across the board. If the only dimple was for the office of President, it was not seen as a clear indication of intent because clearly the voter was capable of pressing the stylus through in every other instance, so it didn’t count. If I were the goddess of voting, that’s how I’d call it, too.

I hadn’t heard that there were instances of double punched cards where one candidate’s hole was circled in ink. That those votes were (apparently) thrown out is outrageous to me. Personally, I think it’s extremely clear what the intent was – “oops, I punched 2, this is the one I want.” I mean, c’mon!

The swinging and hanging chad thing has been discussed ad nauseum and I’m not going to go over that one again.

This whole thing has made me so sad. :frowning:

12

I have a different interpretation. Voting is a negative right, not a positive one. That is, government is prohibited from interfering with the right to vote, but has no obligation to facilitate the right to vote. A contrast with this would be the right to counsel, which is a positive right; if you can’t afford a lawyer, the government must facillitate your getting one. Someone who has appendicitis has no more right to vote than someone with no money has a right to buy a gun, or a mute has the right to free speach. When I vote in a voting booth, I take my card out and check that the chads have been removed. Are there some people that don’t check their cards? Yes. Do some of these end up not having a vote recorded? Yes. So? The right to vote is the opportunity to vote, not the guarantee to vote. Just because some end not voting because of choices they made, that doesn’t mean that their right has been violated. Suppose someone sent in letter to their registrar of voters saying that they didn’t register to vote because they didn’t think it would be important, but now that the election is so close they want to vote. How is this different from someone who didn’t think that their vote was important enough to check their card, but now want their vote to be recorded? It seems to me that not checking one’s card is a strong indication of a lack of intent to vote.

13

Uhhhm, did you read my reply directly above yours?

14

I think it appeared between the time I opened the thread and when I replied. After thinking about it a bit more, I’ve realized that my position is based upon my state’s ballots, and may not apply to Florida. However, based on my own experience:

You can take it out after each vote if your memory is insufficient. Yeah, it’ll mean that voting will take you a few more minutes.

Again, it is the voter’s responsibility to vote properly.

15

I concede the point. The Appendicitis Boy analogy is inapposite to the issue here. Please disregard.

I would disagree that failure to check one’s card is an indication of lack of intent to vote. Quite strenuously. I think intent to vote (not intent to vote for a particular candidate) is demonstrated by walking into the voting booth - my voting booths, for one, don’t have candy or booze to make it worthwhile to hang around in. :wink: I think failure to check one’s card is instead an indication of, at most, laziness.

Sua

16

Let’s see. Assume 3 extra minutes per voter, maybe 1,000 voters per precinct, two voting machines per precinct. This’ll only take 1500 minutes = 25 hours = 1 day longer for everyone to vote.