Also known as: voter intent · voter's intent · voters' intent
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
A standard used in election recounts to determine whether a ballot marking reflects a voter's choice on a measure or candidate. Application of the standard without uniform statewide rules produces arbitrary differences in how identically marked ballots are treated.
Iain Irons and Ingrid Innes both circled the yes oval on a statewide telecommunications referendum ballot. Coastal county workers counted Iain's ballot under a lenient rule that accepted any intentional mark near the oval. Inland county workers rejected Ingrid's identical marking under a strict zero-discretion rule. The differing outcomes turned on the absence of a single statewide test for voter intent.
Hannah and West Farms submitted ballots with handwritten choices in the margin on a water rights measure. County B officials accepted the marginal notations as valid expressions of voter intent. Counties C and D rejected the same markings because they were not inside the designated bubbles. The inconsistent treatment hinged on each county's separate method for reading voter intent.
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Varying county rules cause identically marked ballots to be counted in one place and rejected in another. The Equal Protection Clause requires uniform statewide standards once a recount begins so that each vote receives substantially equal weight.
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The holding is limited to presidential elections, yet the underlying equal protection principle applies whenever a state conducts a statewide recount. Courts therefore weigh the same uniformity requirement when evaluating referenda recounts.
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Internal consistency within a county does not satisfy equal protection. The constitutional defect is the lack of a single statewide standard that prevents the same marking from receiving different treatment based solely on county lines.
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…court directed that the recount be conducted using a standard that would count a ballot if there was a clear indication of the intent of the voter. The Florida Supreme Court’s decision required the manual recount of approximately 45,000 ballots statewide. The court did not specify the precise standard to be used in determining voter…