No, a stray dot on a ballot won’t invalidate a vote for another candidate

Social media users are claiming a discrepancy with Kentucky ballots will invalidate a vote for anyone other than Vice President Kamala Harris. 

A photo of a Kentucky ballot shared in a Nov. 3 Facebook post appears to have a printed dot in the box next to Harris’ name, and social media users claimed a vote for any other candidate "will be void" because of the dot. The social media posts instructed voters to request new ballots if they see similar marks. 

Although the photo shows a Kentucky ballot, social media users in other states, including Ohio, Pennsylvania and Alabama, shared the same image with the same text and the same warning. 

The post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads.)

In a Nov. 4 statement, the Kentucky State Board of Elections said neither it nor the state attorney general’s office had received any reports or complaints of mail-in absentee ballots or early in-person absentee ballots with preprinted marks in the candidate selection fields as of Nov. 4. Republican Secretary of State Michael G. Adams oversees the Board of Elections, which includes four Democratic and four Republican members.

"As no one has presented a pre-marked ballot to election administrators or law enforcement, the claim that at least one ballot may have had a pre-printed mark in Kentucky, currently only exists in the vacuum of social media," the board said in the statement. 

If a ballot did have the mark shown in the photo, it would be unlikely to be counted as a vote, state officials said. 

Whether tabulators would read the dot shown in the photo as a vote depends on the local equipment’s settings, Taylor Brown, the general counsel for the Kentucky State Board of Elections, said. Generally, Brown said, the machine settings would have to be very sensitive to detect a dot of that size.

Administrative rules in Kentucky define what types of marks constitute a vote, and a small dot is not among the definitions in the law.

If a ballot is flagged as having too many selections for one office — which is called an overvote — county officials also have leeway to determine voter intent. If a mail-in ballot had a full box filled in and a small dot in a different box, county officials could interpret the full box as the voter’s selection, Brown said.

Featured Fact-check

Social Media

stated on October 13, 2024 in social media posts

Video shows former Vice President Mike Pence endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

"The law says the two selections have to be ‘similarly marked’ (to constitute an overvote), and a small, single dot is not recognized as one of the markings that constitutes a vote," Brown said.

Also, when voting by mail, if voters mark more than one candidate choice in ink, they can circle their preferred choice and the vote will be counted, the Kentucky board said. Mailed absentee ballots come with an instruction sheet that explains that process.

When voting in person, either early or on Election Day, Kentucky voters can choose to spoil their ballot and receive a new, clean ballot, up to two times. If a voter tries to cast a vote where more candidates are selected for an office than allowed, the ballot scanner will flag the ballot as including an overvote and the voter will be allowed to cast a new ballot. 

Outside Kentucky, similar systems are in place to notify voters of an overvote and examine voter intent when counting votes. The 2002 Help America Vote Act requires that voting systems notify voters if they select more candidates than allowed and give them a chance to correct their ballots.

Each state has its own process for interpreting voter intent and scanning ballot selections, Amy Cohen, the executive director of the National Association of State Election Directors, told PolitiFact. In many states, if a ballot includes both a small mark and a selection box that’s fully filled in for the same office, the vote would be counted for the fully marked candidate.

Once a mail-in ballot is separated from its envelope, the voter is unknown, making it harder to rectify overvotes of mail-in ballots. Election workers look for discrepancies when they preprocess mail-in ballots, and they "treat it in accordance with their jurisdiction’s procedures," Cohen said. 

If an overvote occurs and it is unclear which candidate the voter intended to select, no vote is counted for that office.

Our ruling

Facebook posts said If a ballot has a small dot in the box for Harris, "any other box filled in, will be void." 

Kentucky officials said they had received no reports or complaints of ballots with preprinted marks in the candidate selection fields as of Nov. 4.

The mark shown in the photo does not constitute a vote under state law, Kentucky officials said. If a ballot included a small mark such as that and a selection for another candidate that was clearly filled out, the clearly marked vote would be counted. 

We rate the claim False.