Voter drop-off, roll-off, or undervoting occurs when a voter selects fewer options in a contest than the maximum number allowed or makes no selection at all for a particular election. Undervotes may be intentional or unintentional. Intentional undervotes arise from deliberate

abstention Abstention is a term in election procedure for when a participant in a Voting, vote either does not go to vote (on election day) or, in parliamentary procedure, is present during the vote but does not cast a ballot. Abstention must be contrast ...

. An individual may participate in the election but decline to support any candidate as a form of

protest A protest (also called a demonstration, remonstration, or remonstrance) is a public act of objection, disapproval or dissent against political advantage. Protests can be thought of as acts of cooperation in which numerous people cooperate ...

, or may simply choose not to vote for lower offices because they lack information or interest in downballot races. For example, a voter might select a presidential candidate but abstain from a concurrent county commissioner election. Unintentional undervotes may result from poor

ballot design A ballot is a device used to cast votes in an election and may be found as a piece of paper or a small ball used in voting. It was originally a small ball (see blackballing) used to record decisions made by voters in Italy around the 16th centu ...

or voter misunderstanding. For instance, a voter mistakenly marking a preference ballot by selecting the same candidate for multiple positions could lead to an undervote. Undervotes, together with

overvote An overvote occurs when one votes for more than the maximum number of selections allowed in a contest. The result is a spoiled vote which is not included in the final tally. One example of an overvote would be voting for two candidates in a singl ...

s (where a voter selects more options than are allowed), are collectively referred to as ''

residual vote In voting, a ballot is considered spoilt (chiefly British), spoiled (chiefly American), void, null, informal, invalid, rejected or stray if a law declares or an election authority determines that it is invalid and thus not included in the vote ...

s''. These are used in academic studies to assess the accuracy and reliability of voting systems in capturing voter intent.

References

External links

Champaign County Illinois November 2006 Undervote Analysis

Caltech/ MIT Voting Technology Project
Elections Voting theory {{election-stub