Exhausted Ballot

What is an Exhausted Ballot? An exhausted ballot occurs when a voter overvotes, undervotes, or voter ranks only candidates that are eliminated from race (Exhausted Choices).

Because these votes are not tabulated in the final round, that ballot does not influence the election after it becomes exhausted.

For example, if a ballot becomes exhausted in round four of an election that necessitates 20 rounds of tabulation, the voter’s ballot is not included in the final tally; it is as if they never showed up on Election Day.

the candidate top-ranked on the fewest ballots is eliminated (from the election, and from all ballots), reducing it to a (C-1)-candidate election, and the process continues until only one candidate remains – the winner.

Below are definitions for each type of exhausted ballot. Overvote

An overvote occurs when a voter marks two candidates in a single column/rank. For example, if a voter marked both Janie Smith and Aaron Jones as his first choice, his ballot would not count in the election. Likewise, if a voter correctly ranked his first choice but marked two candidates in the following column, only the first choice would be tabulated. Undervote

An undervote occurs when a voter skips two or more columns or rankings. For example, if a voter picked Janie Smith as his first choice, skipped his second and third choice and selected another candidate as his fourth choice, his ballot would not count in the election after the first round. Exhausted Choices

An exhausted choice occurs when a voter ranks only candidates that are eliminated from contention. For example, a voter may only rank Janie Smith and Polly Williams, even if they are eventually eliminated after round one of tabulation.

For the purpose of this report, the distinction between exhausted ballots in the first round of tabulation and the rest of the election merits clarification

We do not consider overvotes and undervotes in the first round of tabulation as “exhausted votes” because voters could make the same mistake on a ballot in an election decided by plurality.

In other words, votes that are exhausted in the second and subsequent rounds of tabulation are purely a consequence of using ranked-choice voting method tabulation algorithm. Thus, this report will focus on and isolate those exhausted ballots.

Ballot Exhaustion

Refers to processing a ranked choice voting contest on a cast ballot, when that ballot becomes inactive and cannot be advanced in the tabulation for a contest because there are no further valid rankings on the ballot for continuing contest options.