[EL] message from John Shockley: Did poor ballot design elect Rick Scott to the U.S. Senate?

[Rick Hasen]

John writes:

Dear Listserve:

We know that poor ballot design (the butterfly ballot in Palm Beach County) accidentally elected George W. Bush president of the United States in 2000 by 537 votes.  But now poor ballot design may have accidentally elected Rick Scott the new U.S. Senator from Florida.  With Broward County ignoring ballot design experts by placing the U.S. Senate race at the bottom of a list of instructions on how to vote, approximately 26,000 voters in that county voted in the gubernatorial race but neglected to vote in the Senate race.  At the end of counting, Broward County tallied 472,239 for Nelson, and 211,397 votes for Scott.  Nelson won the county by 69.07%.  If those 26,000 missing votes were apportioned in the same way, Nelson would have gained 17,960 more votes, and Scott would have gained 8,041 votes, for a difference of 9,919 votes. Officially, Scott won by 10,033 votes out of more than eight million votes cast.  That would leave Scott the victor by 114 votes.  Of course, we don't know if those 26,000 voters voted more heavily Democratic or Republican, and I don't know if anyone is able to examine those ballots to tell how they voted for Gillum or DeSantis as a close approximation of how they would have voted in the Senate race.  That would tell us more.  But it certainly seems plausible that poor ballot design (this time in Broward, not Palm Beach) accidentally elected Scott to the U.S. Senate.

John Shockley
Department of Political Science, Retired
Augsburg University




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