rejected ballots
Disallowed electoral submissions
Rejected ballots are votes that election officials have disqualified and excluded from the count.
Ballots may be rejected for various reasons: arriving late, missing signatures, mismatched signatures, stray marks, overvotes (selecting too many candidates), or technical defects.
The term appears frequently in close elections where rejected ballots might have changed the outcome: Thousands of rejected ballots were challenged in court.
- spoiledRuined or overindulged
- invalidWithout legal force
- disqualifiedDeclared unfit to compete
- voidedMade legally ineffective
- thrown outExpelled or discarded
discarded · hanging chad · overvote · undervote · voter intent · provisional · absentee · recount · contested · challenged · signature · mismatch · signature verification · envelope · scanner · tabulation · poll worker · election