The Voter Saving Ink

 Of the one-thousand odd things from the November election....the one key thing that I look over and it continues to bother me in some way......there is the one-mark ballots.

By one-mark ballots, this is an entire page of candidates and amendments (not just the Presidential race), where ONLY one single line was marked.

As an example, the ballot I had from Alabama had roughly 20 lines of candidates and ballot measures.

I'll readily admit....every four years...at least four ballot measures appear, and I might be keenly aware of one single ballot measure, with the other three zero knowledge.  I tend to always vote 'no', if I don't know anything about the measure.

I've discussed in the years past with other folks.  Some from California would remark that they have a serious problem in understanding the list of political options and measures.  

But here in this ballot discussion....there's this issue that 450k ballots, from five states...returned to be counted and ONLY the Presidential race was marked. NOTHING else on the page submitted was marked.

Around 98,000 ballots in Pennsylvania, around 80,000 to 90,000 in Georgia, roughly 42,000 in Arizona, around 110k in Michigan and roughly 62,000 in Wisconsin.

I'm told by journalists and experts....this is normal.

I'm a bit skeptical that this is normal.

You'd have to assume that Senator races are significant (like in Georgia) but that 80k to 90k didn't mark that?  Same issue in Arizona and Michigan.

To say it's occurred in past races?  Well....that would drag me back to those races and ask just how far back do you have one-line ballots filled out?  Does this go back to the 1990s?  The past four to six election periods?  And no one really said anything or went out to ask people why they don't fill out the 20-odd other lines?  

The comical thing here....you could in most states....pick up the ballot and just mark ALL-REPUBLICAN or ALL-DEMOCRAT at the top, and at least get most of the ballot filled out and leave the measures empty.  But they didn't even choose to do that.

You end up with some guy or gal....who just saved a ton of ink....by marking one single X in a column, and leaving the rest blank.  

Just something to think about.