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Please - stop using phrase SPOILED BALLOTS

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drunkdriver-in-chief Donating Member (267 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Nov-18-04 06:23 PM
Original message
Please - stop using phrase SPOILED BALLOTS
Edited on Thu Nov-18-04 06:33 PM by drunkdriver-in-chief
That's the republican, and of course, media term for the ballots that should be called "machine rejected ballots". Repugs love the word spoiled because people think those are ballots where some idiot voter screwed up and who cares about the votes of idiots. In fact most of these are good ballots rejected by the machine for any of a million quirky reasons and every one of them should definitely be human-inspected.

Let's stop letting the GOP define the terms of the debate.
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Jasper 91 Donating Member (483 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Nov-18-04 06:27 PM
Response to Original message
1. Quite right , they are not 'spoiled'
And as human eyes are always going to be better at detecting intent than a machine, they should yield many more votes.
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MotownLew Donating Member (118 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Nov-18-04 06:56 PM
Response to Original message
2. Since they're sitting on them instead of recounting, how about...
Ballots that are slightly past their "product freshness date?"

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Chomp Donating Member (602 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Nov-18-04 06:58 PM
Response to Original message
3. Yes but...
...that is not to say that such a thing as "spoiled ballots" don't exist at all. Calling illegally disgarded/uncounted votes "spoiled ballots" is indeed wrong, but genuine spoiled ballots are a fact of life.

Every election in every country has a large number of spoiled ballots, so it's not unique to the US.

I tried to Google for stats on international comparisons, but couldn't find anything. Would be interested to see them.
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Starlight Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Nov-18-04 07:15 PM
Response to Reply #3
4. That's true. I've spoiled ballots myself.
If you make a mistake, they aren't permitted to throw your ballot in the trash. The ballots are numbered and they need to account for every one. They have to mark it "spoiled" and document that you were given a new ballot. If I remember correctly, I even had to sign something.
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