Spoiled ballot: Difference between revisions

AccordingA to'''spoiled Englishballot''' Wikipedia:or '''spoilt vote''' is a ballot which suggests that the voter did not followed the provided instructions. A [[ballot]] is often considered "spoilt", "spoiled"," void", "null", "informal", "invalid" or "stray" if a law declares or an [[election]] authority determines that it is invalid and thus not included in the [[Vote counting|vote count]].<ref>Because English is a language that divides the [[United Kingdom]] and the [[United States]] (among other places), the Wikipedia article is a disaster. We should fix that on electowiki, at least. WTF is "residual vote", anyway? Are lawyers copying whole paragraphs out of Wikipedia (and possibly editing it to suit their purposes)?</ref><ref>The [[w:spoilt_vote]] article as of ~~~~~10:23, 27 February 2023 (UTC): https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Spoilt_vote&oldid=1129052052</ref> This may occur accidentally or deliberately. The total number of spoiled ballots in a United States election has been called the "residual vote".<ref>Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project, ''Residual Votes Attributable to Technology: An Assessment of the Reliability of Existing Voting Equipment'', version 2, 3 Mar. 2001, http://www.hss.caltech.edu/~voting/Caltech_MIT_Report_Version2.pdf</ref> In Australia, such votes are generally referred to as "informal votes", and in Canada they are referred to as "rejected votes".

In some jurisdictions, spoiltthe votesnumber of spoiled ballots are counted and reported.