Well, I should fess up and say that 7,000 is only an estimate. No one has an exact overvotes-vs.-undervotes breakdown from '96. The way one can extrapolate that number though,is as follows.
Well, the short answer is that the 14,000 number contains both over votes AND under votes votes. In this election, 19,000 ballots were due to over voting while an additional 10,000 ballots were discarded due to undervoting.
So looked at in the same light with the same standard, you get either 30,000 this year vs 14,000 in '96, or you get 19,000 this year vs approx 7,000 in '96. Either way, this years' discards were *double* what went on in the last election. NOT as close as 14,000 vs 19,000.
The long answer is this:
Punch-card ballots are most often discarded for two reasons: when voters select too many candidates per contest ("overvote") or no candidate at all ("undervote").
Overvoting counts for roughly one ballot per thousand, or .10 percent.
Undervoting occurs on a lengthy ballot when voters simply don't bother to fill in every category. Overvoting occurs when, for example, people think they have to mark their selection for both President *and* Vice President. Not very bright, I know, but there you have it. When ballots are "discarded" for either reason, they are done so only for that particular race. If someone overvotes for president, or doesn't vote at all, his or her legitimate vote for senator still counts.
Due to this, it is *very* unusual for discarded ballots to contain more overvotes than undervotes.
In this election, the much-talked about 19,000 disputed ballots in Palm Beach included overvotes only. An additional 10,000 ballots were put aside by county officials for undervoting, bringing the total to nearly 30,000 discarded ballots in all.
In the '96 election, the 14,000 Palm Beach County ballots that were voided in included *both overvoting and undervoting.* In other words, there were twice as many ballots voided this year in Palm Beach County.
Again, no one has an exact overvotes-vs.-undervotes breakdown from '96. But understanding that undervotes almost always outnumber overvotes, at most, half of those 14,000 ballots in '96 were undervotes.
