The voters, though they’re instructed not to, can fill in more than one oval for the same candidate in the same race, if that candidate is the nominee of more than one party. For example, Andrew Cuomo has the Democratic gubernatorial line in November, along with the Independence Party line. And he may yet get the Working Families Party’s ballot line. A voter, theoretically, could ink in the little oval under Cuomo’s name under each of those parties.
Oh no! you say. That would be considered an “overvote,” and the new electronic scanning machines would flag that on the computer screen, giving the voter the option to get a new ballot and start over again. WRONG!
“It won’t be considered an ‘overvote’ in that case, “ says Marjorie Kelleher Shea of the Women’s City Club of New York. And she’s absolutely right, according to both city and state election officials.
A decision was made to accept overcounted ballots for races in which candidates have more than one party line. However, the minor parties won’t get any of those votes credited to them. They’ll be credited to either the Democratic or Republican parties, as the case might be. Taking Cuomo again as an example: any “overvote” ballot cast for him would be credited to the Democratic Party, not the Independence or WFP.
Conceivably, if that happened in enough cases, it could cost the minor parties votes toward their 50,000-vote threshold to remain recognized political parties with automatic ballot access (otherwise, they’d have to go the arduous signature route).
Douglas Kellner, a Manhattan Democrat on the state Board of Elections, acknowledged the ballot quirk has raised some concern among the minor parties, but he said that few voters would mark up more than one oval for a candidate in the same race. “Just don’t do it!” he admonished.
But suppose, enough voters were to mark up ballots for Cuomo on all his lines and all those votes credited to the Democratic line and leave the minor parties just shy of their needed 50,000 gubernatorial votes.
At a demo at our New York City Independence Party Executive meeting, we were not told of this but was told "overvotes" would be flagged and the voter could reject their ballot, have it marked as "VOID", and get a new one. The voter could do this three times before they would have to vote on a "Provisional" ballot to be counted later.
UPDATE
On September 14, 200 the New York Conservative Party, and the New York Working Families Party, jointly filed a lawsuit in federal court over how votes are counted. The problem, which is a new problem in New York state this year with the new optical scanning system, is that some voters could inevitably vote for the same candidate twice when that voter sees the name of a preferred candidate who is listed multiple times on the ballot, once under each party label. The case is Conservative Party of New York et al v New York State Board of Elections, 10cv-6923, southern district. It was assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Jed Rakoff, a Clinton appointee. The lawsuit is being handled by the Brennan Center.
I viewed the 2/18/2010 archived New York State Board of Elections meeting. Anna Svizzero of Election Operations on the Board explained to the Board members that in the General Election with Fusion voting, if a voter filled in the oval for the same candidate on multiple party lines it would count as a valid vote and not give the voter a chance to eject the ballot and re-vote. The other issue was which oval would count and it is the first selected oval either top to bottom or left to right depending on the county's ballot format. They did not explain the reason just the process.
NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!
Michael H. Drucker
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