This causes innumerable blunders, from the trivial to the disastrous. It is also the reason so many ballots in the primary elections last Saturday were spoiled. The state Office of Elections estimated that 9,300 ballots did not count because people attempted to vote for candidates in more than one party. A spokesman for the office said most of the people who voted improperly were given a chance to correct the problem but many apparently left the polling places without resubmitting corrected ballots. Those who voted absentee had no opportunity to correct their ballots.
State law requires voters in a primary election to choose only one party's candidates.
Unfortunately, this requirement wasn't understood by some voters although the ballot instructions and election workers emphasized it. It didn't help that the ballot included candidates in both party primaries and nonpartisan elections. In the nonpartisan contests, voters had an unrestricted choice. This was complicated and, for some, confusing. But a careful reading of the instructions should have prevented errors.