For those of you who vote on paper ballots, or know someone who does, this diary is for you.
I volunteered with the Obama campaign here in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, to be a Poll Observer and attended the training session last weekend. The trainers and the Board of Elections mentioned a problem they noticed during a recent special election that they were concerned would also show up on November 4. Is it yet another Republican dirty trick? Nope, it’s over-enthusiastic voters!
Imagine a voter stepping into the booth, ballot in hand, finally getting the opportunity to vote for Barack Obama for President. It’s been a long time coming, in so many ways. The voter carefully fills in the oval next to the Obama/Biden entry.
Then the voter sees the oval and the blank line for a write-in candidate and thinks, "I’m gonna make damn sure this guy gets into the White House. Let there be NO confusion over who I’m voting for." So this enthusiastic voter fills in the oval and writes in Barack Obama’s name.
WRONG.
Enter the Double Bubble problem.
Filling in the two ovals creates an Over Vote. In Ohio at least, Over Votes will NOT COUNT if cast.
Of course, the best cure for the Double Bubble problem is to avoid it in the first place. So, if you are an enthusiastic voter or know someone who is that could benefit from some forewarning – forewarn and be forewarned!
But even if voters do get over-enthused and get into some Double Bubble trouble, there is a way to catch a good number (but probably not all) of them before the votes get cast.
Each precinct is supposed to have a precinct-based optical scanner (PBOS) in place. If a ballot fed into the PBOS has an Over Vote, the PBOS will reject the ballot, indicating that something is wrong with it. If the poll workers are being helpful, they will be able to explain the problem and give the voter an opportunity to fill out another ballot. One of our jobs as Poll Observers will be to make sure poll workers aren’t, instead, manually overriding the PBOS and causing the ballot to be cast despite the Over Vote.
Unfortunately, if lines get too long or a PBOS is out of service for some reason, ballots may be put in boxes without first being sent through a PBOS. There is no way to catch and correct Over Votes on those ballots. As it stands right now, those votes will be lost.
So please
Vote for Barack Obama for President ... but only once!