Friday, April 24, 2009

Spoiled Votes

What exactly is a spoilt vote?

Wikipedia describes a spoined vote as one of the following:

Ways of spoiling a ballot include:

  • leaving the ballot blank (though some ballots include an explicit "none of the above" option)
  • completing the ballot in an illogical or unapproved manner, such as:
    • casting more than the permitted number of votes, for example, more than one vote in a plurality voting system, an overvote.
    • casting fewer than the permitted number of votes, for example, casting only 2 votes in a vote-for-three race, an undervote.
    • filling a preference ballot out of sequence, e.g. 1-2-2-3-4 or 1-2-4-5-6, or marking such a ballot with an "X" where that is not permitted.
  • filling the ballot in a manner which is illegible or incomprehensible.
  • physically deforming ballots, especially those counted by machine.
  • writing on the ballot, other than the minimal marks necessary to complete it, may be regarded as compromising the secrecy of the ballot due to the possibility of handwriting analysisestablishing the voter's identity.


Spoilt votes may be the result of a deliberate act by the voter;

The validity of the election may be questioned if there is an unusually high proportion of spoilt votes, however, in countries such as the UK where a spoilt ballot paper counts towards the voter turnout, some voters will deliberately spoil their ballot paper to show disapproval of the candidates available whilst still taking part in the electoral process. In theory, a UK election could have a 100% turnout with no votes cast for any of the candidates if every registered voter were to spoil their paper, although this is highly improbable.

If the IEC does not include the spoilt votes in the count then this could make a HUGE difference into whether the ANC gets a 2/3rd's majority.

The average length of time that people stood in the queues to vote was well over 2 hours for most people.  Surely their votes should count?  Even a spoiled vote should count as a vote!

1 comment:

  1. What the ANC actually needs to change the constitution is 2/3rds of the Members of Parliament, not 2/3rds of the vote. Since you can't have Members of Parliament allocated to spoiled votes in the way that you would to a party, it wouldn't matter if you counted them in the printed percentages.

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