Throwaway votes increased in 2016

Voters found a way to express their disgust over the presidential election choice between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. The number of South Florida voters who either cast a throwaway write-in vote or skipped the presidential race altogether went up.

“We heard from a lot of disgruntled voters. I think that we had a significant number of [people in] the electorate that were unsatisfied with the candidate and they didn’t vote the top of the ticket,” said Susan Bucher, supervisor of elections in Palm Beach County. “A pattern that we hadn’t really seen as often in the past [is] that people left it blank or they placed invalid write-ins in the write-in section. Usually we see

16,268 Number of write-in votes in South Florida that weren’t valid, including votes former presidential candidates such as Jeb Bush, Bernie Sanders and Mitt Romney

down-ballot fatigue. But unusually so, this time we saw the top of the ticket lacking votes.”

Tim Canova of Hollywood, who supported Bernie Sanders and was critical of the way the party operated when he ran unsuccessfully for Congress last year, said people were sending a message by not voting for Clinton or Trump.

“When you give the voters two candidates with very high unfavorability ratings and you ask them to vote for the less objectionable one, a lot of voters don’t want to play that game any more. They’re tired of it,” Canova said.

Canova, a professor of law and public finance at Nova Southeastern University, said that “particularly with this millennial generation, when you give them a choice of the lesser of two flawed candidates, they’ll respond by just saying ‘no thank you. I’m either going to write in a vote for a fringe candidate, third party or not vote at all.’ ”

A Florida State Division of Elections report, released Wednesday, shows more people thumbing their noses at the presidential contest in 2016 than in 2012.

In Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties, 18,008 voters didn’t cast votes for president in 2016 — up from 7,280 in the three counties who didn’t vote in the 2012 presidential contest. The number who skipped the presidential race in South Florida are dwarfed by totals racked up by Trump (867,352) and Clinton (1.6 million) in South Florida.

Statewide, 64,826 voters didn’t cast votes for president in 2016, an increase from the 23,581 who didn’t vote in the 2012 presidential contest. Floridians cast 4.6 million votes to Trump and 4.5 million votes to Clinton.

More people registered protest votes by writing in names of people they’d prefer to see as presidential candidates. They’re included in the category of invalid write-ins, which soared to 16,268 last year in South Florida, compared to 2,531 in the previous presidential election.

Statewide, there were 82,134 invalid write-ins last year, up from 17,552 in 2012.

Florida voters who express their views with a write-in vote end up making a quiet protest. If a candidate hasn’t officially qualified with the state as a write-in candidate, those votes aren’t tallied.

Bucher said some Palm Beach County voters cast presidential write-in votes for Mitt Romney, the unsuccessful 2012 Republican presidential candidate; former Gov. Jeb Bush, who lost the 2016 Republican presidential nominating contest; U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who lost the Democratic nomination; and another famous Florida name — Mickey Mouse.

Others wrote in “none of the above,” Bucher said.

Bill Cowles, the supervisor of elections in Orange County, told the Associated Press that there were votes in his county for the singer Beyonce and former University of Florida quarterback Tim Tebow.

Broward Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes said cartoon characters are always a favorite. “A lot of Mickey Mouse, a lot of Donald Duck and things like that,” she said, adding that those totals aren’t tallied. “We simply don’t capture that. There’s nothing you can do with it anyway.”

Daniel Ruoss, a longtime Republican activist from Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, said the increase is understandable given the dissatisfaction that so many people felt with the two big candidates. “Anecdotally, that’s what you were hearing from everyone,” he said. “That doesn’t really surprise me that people would have carried that into the voting booth.”

Ruoss said if he hadn’t lived in a state with a tight presidential contest like Florida, he might have voted for another presidential candidate. Instead, he voted for Clinton — and resigned his position southern region vice chairman of the Young Republican National Federation and as a Broward County Republican committeeman on Nov. 9, the day after the election. He’s sent in paperwork to become a Democrat.

Snipes said “many people just weren’t happy with either candidate.” But, she said “voting is such a private thing” that it pays to be cautious about drawing conclusions. Also, Snipes noted, voter turnout was much higher in 2016 than in 2012 — statewide it was up 12.2 percent. So it stands to reason there would be some increase in people who skipped the presidential race and who cast invalid write-in votes, Snipes said.

The state report also listed overvotes, in which people voted for more than one candidate.

In South Florida, there were 6,180 overvotes in the presidential contest last year, down from 10,394 in 2012. Statewide, there were 14,427 overvotes in last year’s presidential election, down from 22,523.

It’s hard for people cast an overvote if they go to a neighborhood polling places on Election Day or early voting sites, Bucher and Snipes said. That’s because the optical scanners that receive the ballots are programmed them to kick them back if someone votes for more than one person for the same office, the elections supervisors said. Some people say they still want to go ahead and cast the ballot anyway, even though it means the vote doesn’t count, she said.

It happens more often with people who vote by mail, Bucher said, because they’re not there when the ballot is scanned and don’t have a chance to re-do their ballot to correct an inadvertent overvote.