In the most heavily white precincts, about one of every 14 ballots was thrown out, but in largely black precincts, more than 1 in 5 was spoiled - in some cases almost a third of the ballots, according to a Washington Post computer analysis of Duval County's returns. An additional 5,000 ballots were rejected countywide for undervotes, meaning a choice for president did not register on the punch cards. The sample ballot approved by the county's election supervisor, John Stafford, a Republican, listed all the presidential candidates on one page. On the official ballot, the long list of presidential candidates spilled over onto a second page. We knew that having two pages was something new and different for people, so we labeled the hell out of that thing.
State law requires that sample ballots be the same as the official ballot.
This is a hyper-technicality. We had the same candidates, in the same contests, in the same punch positions. Four other officials in the elections office signed off on the design, Carlberg said. The Rev. Jesse Jackson stopped at a rally in the Abyssinia church late yesterday afternoon and urged a crowd of more than 300 to fight against what he called an injustice. Any legal challenge to the vote in Duval County faces steep odds, said Gregory Harvey, a Philadelphia lawyer who is an expert in election law.