Franken. I think if the intent was for Coleman, his bubble would have been filled in completely. I think the “arrow” is just a stray mark.
Accept. Are Franken’s lawyers kidding with that thumbprint argument?
Reject. No intent can be determined. The dot in the margin is probably random.
Franken. The “NO” next to Coleman’s name is a pretty clear statement of intent.
Franken. The voter obviously felt that the Lizard People should have been on the ballot but he filled in Frankn’s oval, not theirs. I would understand if the Lizard People were to challenge this ballot too, though.
Franken. The check mark and circled mark together are enough to determine intent.
Coleman. Another ticky tack, specious challenge from Franken.
Franken. One of the lamest challenges on the list.
Barkley. Another lame-o challenge from Franken
Barkley.
Coleman. “Underlined” my ass.
I think it would be helpful to see the whole ballots for some of these challenges. Not to see who else they voted for, but to see how else they marked their votes.
Anyone want to take bets on how soon it is before we see “VOTE LIZARD PEOPLE” t-shirts and bumper stickers?
That’s the funniest thing I’ve seen in a while. The best part is the dude probably thought only one or two people would see it. Little did he/she know, it would be opened up to the whole interwebs.
The only ones I would reject are No. 3 and No. 7, which has marks in both the Coleman and Franken ovals and no cross outs or NOs or any other indication of which one is intended. The rest of them are determinable.
This is my question: Why is anyone turning in anything other than a pristinely marked ballot? They’ll give you another one if you screw up.
I didn;t keep track, but I was in the majority on most if not all of them. I think maybe on the arrow one I said reject, but that was based on it being first and on me having some insane notion that a ballot should be fairly clearly filled out (I know htis is stupid of me, some people have poor vision, have inexact motor skills, or may even sneeze as they are fillingout a box).
1 Al
2 Norm
3 Neither (looks like it was an attempt to scribble it out to me)
4 Al
5 Al,
6 Neither. That’s not a check mark, it’s like half a swastika. The voter may vary well have circled square as a reminder to come back to consider the vote later, after the rest of the ballot was filled in.
7 Norm
8 Al
9 Dean
10 Dean
11 Norm
Over all, my faith in my fellow voters has been irreparable harmed. WTF is wrong with these people?
But that’s clearly inapplicable if another bubble’s filled in, unless the mere writing of a write-in name suffices to overrule whatever else the voter does, which would make no sense.
So the only natural interpretation of that part of the statute is that if the voter writes in a name, and fills in no bubbles, then the write-in name counts. If he (I’m betting that the writer of ‘lizard people’ is a ‘he’) starts filling in bubbles for other candidates, then all bets are off.
If the user writes in a name, he doesn’t need to fill in the bubble next to it. The name itself is sufficient to count as a vote.
So even though the voter didn’t fill the bubble next to the write in of ‘Lizard People’, it still counts as a vote for them. Since he also voted for Franken via a bubble, he voted twice, and it’s an overvote.
That’s how I deduced it. If he had simply wrote in “Lizard People” and made no other marks, then his vote for the Lizard People would count.
But since he made a mark for Franken, I am supposed to think that is who he wanted to cast his vote for? If so, why did he write Lizard People? To me, no clear intent could be discerned, so I would vote to toss the ballot.
Reject. Although I’d rather have a look at the pens being used to see if someone would intentionally draw an arrow. If they did, it’d still be rejected, but if it was clearer that this was a stray mark as it appears to be, it could go to Franken.
Accept. There’s pretty clearly no intention of a distinguishing mark there.
Reject. That’s just too far outside the margin of competence for voting.
Franken. The intent is abundantly clear.
Franken. One question here is if any write-in vote counts if the name is filled in but no circle marked. In my opinion - no circle marked means no vote. It’s the same as if the voter made comments next to each person’s name, which ought not to invalidate it. edit I see that it does - maybe. The rule ought to be clearer that a write-in name overrides another vote. I’d reject this ballot, though.
Accept. This might seem to go against my position on #3. However, in that case, there was no way a voter using the same marking method could reasonably vote for Dean Barkley. This is right at the edge of allowable, given the two marks.
Reject. There’s no way of knowing which one was marked first.
Franken. Given the way the other circle’s filled in, there’s only one clear mark and no clear intent to mark for Barkley.
Barkley. Claiming intent for Franken is absurd - it seems more likely they were trying to eliminate any erroneous mark for Franken.
10.Barkley. While the Coleman mark looks more intentional, it’s harder to tell (especially with the careless slash on Franken’s name). I’d just barely give it to Barkley over ‘reject’.
Coleman. He(how’d they know that?)'s not underlining, he’s crossing out. I could see someone arguing that point, but I feel pretty strongly that was the intent.
Explanations:
1: That’s not an arrow, that’s a smudge.
2: The thumbprint almost certainly wasn’t intentional, couldn’t be “read” without an extraordinary effort, and might be too smudged even for that. Besides, a forensics team (who would be needed to read the print anyway) could probably find prints on most ballots, if they looked for them.
3: There’s probably not enough there to constitute a mark: It’s not a check or an X or a circle or anything that a person might consider a “mark”. For a full judgement, though, I’d want to see how the voter marked the other races.
4: Clearly the voter mistakenly filled in the wrong oval, and needed to do something to indicate which one was the mistake.
5: Although the voter wrote in “Lizard People”, he did not fill in the write-in oval, as he did for the presidential race. Presumably he either considers the Lizard People to be a serious contender, but not as good as Al, or he thinks that Al himself is a lizard person.
6: Just one or the other might be unclear, but when there’s two standard selection marks (circling and a check mark), both for the same candidate, it’s clear what the voter meant.
7: The voter made clear marks for Coleman and for other races on the ballot. If he had intended Franken, he would have filled that bubble in completely as well, but he didn’t.
8: Same argument as 7, but even more so.
9: Everyone knows what an erasure means.
10: Vote for Barkley, with a slip of the pencil.
11: I think that’s a cross-out, not an underline. This was probably the same situation as 4.
I’m curious about the folks who think that 8 should count, but not 7: In both cases, one mark is clearly much more complete than the other, and we see enough of the ballot to see that the voter completely filled all the other ovals, too.
