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CEC: New ballot design lessened spoilage
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Posted on Nov 07 2005
The new ballot design significantly reduced the number of spoiled votes in this year’s general election, according to the Commonwealth Election Commission.
CEC executive director Gregorio Sablan estimated Sunday morning that the number of overvotes this election declined by 80 percent compared with the 2001 election.
An overvote occurs when a voter picks more candidates than there are available positions in a race. An undervote occurs when a ballot misses one or more votes for a specific office.
He attributed the decreased number of discarded votes to the new ballot design, which organized the names of candidates by position or office, as opposed to the previous columnar format where names were listed according to political party.
The new ballot design also placed all of the races on one face of the ballot and provided instructions informing voters of the number of seats available in a specific position.
“By reducing the overvotes, you increase the number of ‘good’ votes. Unfortunately, the Legislature has passed a measure that will bring back the old ballot design,” Sablan said.
He was referring to Public Law 14-88, which also removed restrictions pertaining to residency and voter registration that were previously imposed on candidates for the House of Representatives. The law was enacted at the height of the dispute concerning the eligibility of Covenant Party candidate Rose Nelly T. Ada-Hocog in August.
According to partial election results, the gubernatorial race posted the most number of counted votes. The four candidates for governor received a total of 12,352 good votes, 99 percent of the 12,511 ballots cast Saturday.
Even the questions on the judge/justices’ retention, which normally received a less number of votes because they appeared on the back side of the ballot, drew a good number of responses this year.
The question on the retention of Chief Justice Miguel Demapan got the biggest number of responses at a total of 11,577 “yes” and “no” votes. The question on Judge David A. Wiseman’s retention had the least number of responses at 11,301 votes.
“It would be unfair to put the questions on the back side of the ballot,” CEC’s Sablan said.
