An overvote occurs when one votes for more than the maximum number of selections allowed in a contest. The result is a

spoiled vote In voting, a ballot is considered spoilt, spoiled, void, null, informal, invalid or stray if a law declares or an election authority determines that it is invalid and thus not included in the vote count. This may occur accidentally or deliberat ...

which is not included in the final tally. One example of an overvote would be voting for two candidates in a single race with the instruction "Vote for not more than one." ''

Robert's Rules of Order ''Robert's Rules of Order'', often simply referred to as ''Robert's Rules'', is a manual of parliamentary procedure by U.S. Army officer Henry Martyn Robert. "The object of Rules of Order is to assist an assembly to accomplish the work for which ...

'' notes that such votes are illegal. The exact definition of overvotes is ambiguous in a contest with N-of-M voting, where N of M choices can be selected and N>1 (vote for no more than N). Sometimes overvotes are reported as the number of ballots overvoted in the contest, and sometimes it is reported as N*overvoted-ballots.

Undervotes An undervote occurs when the number of distinct choices selected by a voter in a contest is less than the maximum number allowed for that contest or when no selection is made for a single choice contest. In a contested election, an undervote can be ...

combined with overvotes (known as

residual vote In voting, a ballot is considered spoilt, spoiled, void, null, informal, invalid or stray if a law declares or an election authority determines that it is invalid and thus not included in the vote count. This may occur accidentally or deliberat ...

s) can be an academic indicator in evaluating the accuracy of a voting system when recording

voter Voting is a method by which a group, such as a meeting or an electorate, can engage for the purpose of making a collective decision or expressing an opinion usually following discussions, debates or election campaigns. Democracies elect holde ...

intent. While an overvote in a

plurality voting system Plurality voting refers to electoral systems in which a candidate, or candidates, who poll more than any other counterpart (that is, receive a plurality), are elected. In systems based on single-member districts, it elects just one member per ...

limited voting Limited voting (also known as partial block voting) is a voting system in which electors have fewer votes than there are positions available. The positions are awarded to the candidates who receive the most votes absolutely. In the special case ...

is always illegal, in certain other electoral methods including

approval voting Approval voting is an electoral system in which voters can select many candidates instead of selecting only one candidate. Description Approval voting ballots show a list of the options of candidates running. Approval voting lets each voter i ...

, this style of voting is valid, and thus invalid overvotes are not possible. In the corporate world, the term "overvote" describes a situation in which someone votes more proxies than they are authorized to, or for more shares than they hold of record.

References

{{reflist

External links

USAToday.com – How USA Today and others examined overvote
Elections Voting theory