Of course he didn’t need to. There are plenty of marks on these questionable ballots that are unneeded. That’s why we’re looking at them.
Because solely writing in a name is clear intent only in the absence of a correctly marked oval.
By “otherwise,” it means that filling in the oval for Franken is a sufficiently clear sign of intent that writing in a name without filling in the oval doesn’t rise to the level of making it ambiguous. It’s like a ballot with a correctly filled in oval with another stray mark on it somewhere else. If he had also filled in the oval next to Lizard People, then it would have been ambiguous, but he didn’t. The sole filled in oval is next to Franken.
(My guess as to what happened was that he intended the write-in only for president, but accidentally put it in the senate space first. That’s why it’s in both spaces. He then correctly filled in the ovals to indicate whom he intended to cast the votes for.)
That’s not an X on the Lizard People ballot; that’s just a messy fill-in.
As for the determination that the guy is crazy, he may well be, but it’s not the election judges’ place to make that decision. Crazy people are entitled to the same vote as all the rest of us. How ought the ballot to be judged if the write-in were something more sane, such as “Socialist party”? I use the socialists as an example here, rather than a specific name, since “Lizard people” seems to be a group, not an individual.
The question for the Lizard People ballot is, is the intent clear and obvious. I could see it going either way, actually. But in an almost meta way, the mere fact that there is a debate over it, by reasonable unaffiliated people, should men that it is not obvious and should be rejected.
The real question is, would you admit it was you who voted for the Lizard People, thereby getting 15 minutes of fame at the expense of a lifetime being labeled a complete tool?
Franken. (His is the only bubble filled in. If the other marking were unambiguously an arrow I might give it to Coleman, but it’s not so I won’t.)
Accept it. (It is more reasonable to assume the thumbprint was unintentional than that it is a deliberate attempt to communicate the voter’s identity to an optical scanner that presumably is not programmed to read thumbprints.)
Franken. (The mark is directly in line with his name and has no other reason for being on the ballot, but I don’t really object to it not being counted if this rule is applied consistently.)
Franken. (How hard is to determine that someone who wrote “NO” next to Coleman’s name didn’t intend to vote for Coleman?)
Franken. (This voter filled in the bubble for “Lizard People” elsewhere but for Franken here, so he intended to vote for Franken.)
Yes. (The voter put a mark next to the candidate’s name AND circled the square. so the intent is clear beyond a reasonable doubt.)
Coleman. (A fully filled in bubble beats a stray mark everytime.)
Franken. (ditto)
Coleman. (An erasure mark is the opposite of a vote!)
Barkley. (same as 7 and 8)
Coleman. (Crossing out is not underlining, and they know it.)
Voter intent is more important than enforcing strict adherence to procedural rules and the fact that overwhelming majorities agree on most interests shows that determining intent is not an arbitrary or capricious process. The one or two cases in which I disagreed with the majority had to do with whether or not to count a ballot at all. When it came to choosing between one candidate or another, there was really no question.
What? No! According to the law, writing the name is enough to declare your intention to vote for the name. No bubble needed. Marking a bubble is also declaring your intent to vote.
By writing a name, AND marking a DIFFERENT bubble, the law says you were marking your intent to vote for 2 different people, overvoting and invalidating the ballot for that particular election. I agree with that.
Think of this: If the voter had marked the bubble, and THEN wrote ‘Lizard People’, do you think you would see a different intent than if the voter wrote ‘Lizard People’ first, and then filled in a different bubble?
Or it could be a form of expression. If he had written “fuck you” in the space would that be a vote for fuck you? It seems to me the intent was to vote for Franken and to make a joke.
Under that standard, any ballot with a unique write-in would be invalid.
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Can we address the underlying issue here? – Why are there so many fucked up ballots? When I went to vote, there were signs all over the freaking place showing you how to mark a ballot. And it was made clear that you could ask for a replacement if you spoiled it. While we stood in line, we could watch a video presentation on how to mark ballots. Finally, when you were done, the machine scanned your ballot to ensure that it was properly marked. What’s the malfunction here?
Because in the end, if someone makes a mistake, fills in the wrong circle or for whatever reasons doesn’t doa great job, they don;t think it is worth the trouble to create a new ballot thus having to re-do ALL the votes on the ballot, given the fact that it is unlikely that their one vote is really going to matter.
It would make it no longer a secret ballot. If there’s a way to determine after the fact who voted for whom, then a political boss could bribe, threaten, or cajole a voter to vote a particular way. “If there’s not a ballot collected with a checkmark next to Tweed’s name and your signature on the bottom, well, it’d just be too bad if you got fired, now wouldn’t it?”
