[EL] Fwd: Lack of specificity on ballot instructions

[Melanie Reed]

Please unsubscribe me.


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Vince Leibowitz <vince.leibowitz at gmail.com>
Date: Sun, May 15, 2011 at 2:14 AM
Subject: [EL] Lack of specificity on ballot instructions
To: "law-election at department-lists.uci.edu"
<law-election at department-lists.uci.edu>


Fellow Listers,

A few moments ago, I voted in my local elections and noticed a
peculiarity on the ballot for the local independent school district in
Mineola, Texas.

The ballot instructions--printed atop the ballot--did not instruct the
voter on how many candidates they could cast a ballot for. In this
particular election, you could vote for as many as two candidates from
a list of six; however, this wasn't specified. It simply had the
standard language, "mark an 'X' beside your choice" ("choice" was
singular.) I knew there were two seats open and that I could vote for
two candidates, and double checked this with the election judge to
make sure I hadn't slipped into some alternate electoral universe (in
some years, you vote for three board members).

My question is this: was the ballot fatally flawed? That is to say if
I as a voter or a loosing candidate in the election wished to
challenge on these grounds (assuming final numerical tallies showed it
was likely too many people cast a vote for only one candidate, or an
abnormal number of voters were disqualified for voting for too many
candidates), what are the likelihood of prevailing? Is this a HAVA
violation?

Thoughts?

Vince Leibowitz
Principal Consultant
The Dawn Group
DGTexas.com
512.705.7001

Sent from my iPhone
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