What happens if a ballot is damaged or improperly marked?
Election workers reconstruct or “duplicate” ballots that are damaged or improperly marked to preserve voters’ intent. This is necessary if a ballot has, say, a coffee stain or tear — or if a voter circled a candidate rather than filled in a bubble to make their selection — and therefore can’t be read by a machine.
While the process might sound strange to those not familiar with election administration, it’s a legitimate and longstanding way to ensure voters have their votes counted, according to experts. It’s also widely used to translate votes cast by those overseas or in the military onto ballots that can be scanned.
The ballot duplication process involves transcribing a voter’s choices from the damaged ballot onto a new, clean ballot that can be scanned and counted. How exactly that process is handled varies across states.
In many cases, it’s done by bipartisan teams of poll workers, said Barry Burden, a political science professor and director of the Elections Research Center at University of Wisconsin-Madison. That’s not the case everywhere, though it’s common that it’s performed by at least two people — even two staff members — said Jennifer Morrell, a partner at The Elections Group, which works with election officials to improve processes.