Frequent Questions Concerning Optical Scan Voting

Completely darken or fill in the oval to the left of a candidate or public question of your choice.

A pen is provided at the polls.  Absentee voters may use a pen with black or blue ink.

Find the office for which the candidate is running and print the candidate's name on the write-in line for that office. Fill in the oval next to the candidate's name.

If you mark your ballot incorrectly, fold and seal your ballot in a security envelope provided for privacy.  Return to an election judge to receive a new ballot.  The spoiled ballot is not counted.

The voter inserts their ballot into the ballot counter. The ballot is read by the optical scanner and dropped into the metal ballot bin. When the polls close, the tabulator prints the results of all votes cast.

When a voter attempts to cast more votes for an office than allowed, an overvote occurs. The ballot counter will beep to indicate an overvote. The voter may choose to have the ballot accepted (the overvoted office will not count) or to have the ballot returned, marked spoiled, and receive a new ballot.