I just don’t see that mark in the Franken oval as looking unambiguously like a mistake or a stray dot.
I suggest you trademark that ASAP, I know I’d buy a shirt with that on it. If it’s good enough for the Flying Spaghetti Monster, it’s good enough for Lizard People.
ascenray: If he simply wrote in Lizard People and made no mark, you would agree that a vote should be counted for Lizard People? Right?
So, when he makes a mark for Franken, that’s two votes. Ballot disqualified.
Maybe he voted for Franken, then changed his mind and wrote in Lizard People. This guy is pretty whacked to begin with, and since there is so much dispute, even in this thread, how can you say his intent was “clear”?
Was a vote counted for the lizard people? No, it wasn’t. So the name itself is NOT sufficient to count as a vote.
An overvote is NOT a vote (once, twice, or any other number of times). It’s a particular class of failure on the voter’s part to successfully show who the s/he wanted to vote for. One may regard it as an attempt to vote twice or more in the same contest, but even that’s really kinda silly.
Because the secondary mark in 8 is just a dot, like his pen touched the ballot as he was removing it.
In #7, the secondary mark is an almost halfway filled bubble making the intent harder to see.
Yes, because you’re looking for evidence of intent in the absence of a mark. The only reason that writing in the name is unambiguous is because of the lack of a mark. When there is a mark, you don’t need to look to the writing of the name.
Nope. You’re applying a rule instead of looking for indication of intent. When judging intent, making an oval clearly overrides simply writing in the name.
So, why did he write in the name of the Lizard People in the U.S. Senate race?
Without looking at any of the other responses:
-
Franken; this is a smudge, not an arrow.
-
Accept; the thumbprint does not constitute a distinguishing mark.
-
Reject; it’s unclear that the voter intended to vote for anybody
-
Franken; the voter’s intent is clear.
-
Franken; the voter didn’t fill in the circle next to “Lizard People,” he / she merely wrote in the name.
-
Franken; intent seems pretty clear.
-
Coleman; his circle is completely filled in, while Franken’s isn’t, so I think the intent is clear.
-
Franken; ditto.
-
Barkley; ditto.
-
Barkley; ditto.
-
Coleman; the line is obviously a strikethrough intended to nullify the Franken vote.
- Franken
- McCain
- Reject
- Franken
- Franken
- Franken
- Reject
- Franken
- Barkley
- Barkley
- Coleman
I was in the majority for all if them except number 11. Some of those challenges were really lame. Some of the mistakes that people make are really lame too.
In #7 there is much more than an incidental mark. If the Coleman circle wasn’t filled in this would surely count as a Franken vote. The bottom line is that this doorknob voted twice.
I’m not at all surprised by these ballots either. as soon as it became apparent that a recount was in the works I knew we’d see people bleeding ink all over their ballots and doing crazy things like marking in between the circles.
According to the election law I cited, it is.
I think using logic to attempt to decipher the intent of someone who attempted to vote for the lizard people is futile. The dude is clearly crazy, or trying to be a dumbass. In either case, the intent is obfuscated
- Franken. I think the soiled/defaced statute applies there–it seems like the ink got smeared–I don’t see that being an arrow.
- Accept it. I can’t even tell that’s a thumbprint.
- Reject it. It’s not clear that this person was doing anything but getting his pen going.
- Accept it for Franken. I think the NO makes the intent determinable.
- I’m torn between rejecting it and accepting it for Franken. The reason I’d accept it for Franken is because the voter didn’t fill in the circle next to the write-in, when he did elsewhere.
- Accept it for Franken. The checkmark and the aligned circle make the intent determinable. But where on EARTH do they find these people? Seriously, how hard is this?
- I would have said accept it for Coleman if the voter had put an X or something in the Franken box, or done something to indicate that the partial fill-in was an error. Doing nothing makes the intent indeterminable. Reject it.
- This one is a little less ambiguous than the one before it. The dot is just a dot, and doesn’t appear to have been put there with purpose. It’s barely even noticeable. I’d say give this one to Franken.
- Count this one for Barkley. It looks like this person changed their mind last minute, hence the erasure. The attempted erasure statute makes this one clear.
- Another vote for Barkley. The small dot isn’t enough to outweigh the big filled in bubble for Barkley. This one is more similar to 8 than 7.
- Toss up between accepting for Coleman (that’s a scratch-out, not an underline) and rejecting completely. I could go either way.
[ol]
[li]Neither[/li][li]Yes[/li][li]Nobody[/li][li]Al Franken[/li][li]Al Franken[/li][li]Yes[/li][li]Neither[/li][li]Al Franken[/li][li]Dean Barkley[/li][li]Dean Barkely[/li][li]Neither[/li][/ol]
I see it as someone who wanted to cast a joke vote for president but a genuine vote for senator.
- Franken - Actually, on second viewing, it does kinda look like an arrow, so maybe Reject
- Accept - it’s a smudge from holding the ballot
- No vote
- Franken - voter’s intent seems clear
- Reject - not only did he write in Lizard People, but there’s an X in the Franken box. Can’t tell what is real intent was.
- Reject - I don’t think that is a check mark and the very obvious place to vote is completely blank. A view of how this voter addressed the rest of the ballot could sway me, though.
- Close one. It likes like a vote for Coleman, though.
- Franken - the mark for Dean is just a pen mark
- Dean - clearly a corrected mistake
- Dean - it’s just a pen mark
- Norm - it looks like he incorrectly voted for Al then realized his mistake and crossed it out
Then you agree that the election judges ignored that law by not counting that as a vote for the Lizard People.
This is a defensible position. I disagree with it, but it’s defensible.
Again, if he meant to cast a legitimate vote for U.S. Senate, then why did he write Lizard People in the write-in slot?
You don’t know, and I don’t know, so I say that there is no clear intent…
It doesn’t matter why, because there is otherwise a clear intent to vote for Franken. He filled in the oval to show where intended to cast a vote for the Lizard People for president. It’s pretty clear to me that he would have filled in the oval if he had intended to cast a vote for the Lizard People for senator.
Of course it matters why. We are trying to discern his intent.
He did fill in the Lizard People oval for President. If his sole intent was to vote for Franken for Senator, then there was no need to write in Lizard People for that office.
The fact that he wrote them in gives me reason to doubt any type of clear intent. You say that there was an “otherwise” clear intent to vote for Franken. Well, why do we dismiss the part before the “otherwise”?
ETA: BTW, this thread is great. Big fun this afternoon with this…