27897: Sharp (news/comments): Null And Blank Votes (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: JONATHAN SHARP <flyingspinach@gmail.com>

"Null And Blank Votes

Electoral officials have also discarded 147,765 votes, over 7% of the
total, as "null." Article 185 of the Electoral Code allows officials
to nullify ballots if they "cannot recognize the intention or
political will of the elector." The Presidential ballots were
complicated- 33 candidates, each with a photo, an emblem and the names
of the candidate and the party. Some Haitian voters, unused to filling
out forms or writing, undoubtedly made mistakes-like marking two
boxes- that made determining their choice impossible. But 147,765
voided votes is a lot, especially when that decision was made by local
officials handpicked by an Electoral Council that had no
representation from Lavalas or Lespwa. Overly strict criterion (such
as requiring an "x" to be completely within a candidate's box), even
if neutrally applied, would have a disproportionate impact on Preval
voters, who are more unused to filling out forms than their
better-heeled compatriots, and therefore more likely to make mistakes.

Another group of votes, 85,290, or 4.6%, are classified as blank
ballots. These votes are actually counted against Preval, because they
are included in the total number of valid votes that provides the
baseline for the 50% threshold. This is a potentially reasonable
system, just unreasonably applied to Haiti. It allows voters to show
their displeasure with all the candidates by voting for no one. It
makes sense in wealthy countries, but it is absurd to think that
85,000 people would leave their babies, their fields and other work
and spend hours walking or waiting in the tropical heat just to say
they did not like any of the 33 candidates. A more likely explanation
is that illiterate voters got confused by the complicated ballots and
marked nothing. Again, this problem would disproportionately affect
poor voters likely to vote for Preval. But even if it did not- if the
blank votes were allocated to candidates based on their percentage of
other votes- Preval would clear 50%.

The blank and null ballots combined exceeded Mr. Manigat's vote by
17,000. The rules for blank and null votes are consistent with
previous Haitian elections, so it is hard to call the rules themselves
fraudulent. But the scale of the distortion of the vote caused by
these rules was both foreseeable and preventable. The same problem has
arisen at every election since 1990, most of which were observed by
the UN and the Organization of American States, which were active in
preparing the elections this time around. The distortion could be
sharply reduced with a simple voter education campaign: going into
poor neighborhoods, showing how to mark ballots and giving voters an
opportunity to practice on sample ballots. There was money available
for such a program- the election cost over $70 million dollars, most
of it coming from abroad, more than $30 for every vote cast. The
political parties, many of which represented a fraction of one percent
of the electorate, received generous subsidies. But no concerted
effort was made to help the much larger share of the voters who had
demonstrated difficulty with filling out the ballots. "

source: http://www.globalpolicy.org/opinion/2006/0214somevotes.htm

------------------------
My Comments:

Assuming that the information above is correct (always a dubious
assumption), I take it that some blank votes were declared null on the
grounds that the counters "cannot recognize the intention or political
will of the elector" per Article 185, which I think is a fair
assumption about a blank ballot unless something else in the electoral
code forbids nullifying a blank. So, the "backroom deal" may be
entirely valid.

Although, some news stories are saying that the blank ballots were
tossed out of the pool and some are saying that they were
"redistributed" according to percentage. The net impact on the final
percentages is the same in both cases, but from what I see the first
option has a valid justification in the code.

Finally, in the future if Haiti decides to keep a "no-vote/blank
ballot" option it would be a good idea to have it as an actual box to
check on the ballot, a "none of the above" or "not applicable" box
with no picture, to distinguish disliking all the candidates from
simply making a mistake. Of course, if the ballot design had been done
up by a bunch of impartial accountants it probably would have been
done this way from the get-go.

Best,
Jon