About Those Bullet Ballots

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188. He uses the term "undervote" to mean the same thing as a bullet ballot

In fact, "if you actually read his letter," he uses the term "undervote" exactly once, in a heading that reads "The Tell: A Historically Absurd Number of Trump-Only Bullet Ballots or Undervotes." His use of the word "or" rather than "and" is telling, particularly since he goes on to be very specific in that he is talking about one, and only one, particular category of undervote, namely a "bullet ballot." He nowhere discusses the other types of undervotes or uses that term anywhere in his letter.

To explain further, an undervote occurs when the number of choices selected by a voter in an election is less than the maximum number allowed for that election. So it is an undervote if there are five races and someone doesn't cast a vote in all of them. The term "bullet ballot" is used to refer to a specific category of undervote -- the one where a voter only casts a vote for one election where there is more than one on the ballot. That is the category of undervote Spoonamore's letter is about. Not undervotes where someone, on a ballot with multiple races, voted not merely in the presidential race but also in some of the other races on the ballot, but not every one of them.

And, when it comes to bullet ballots, mathematically, his assertions do not survive even basic scrutiny. If 5,592,243 votes were cast in the Governor's race, it is not possible for the presidential race count of 5,699,862 to include 350,000 votes that weren't cast in the governor's race.

Spoonamare's letter makes no effort to explain how he comes up with his 350,000 vote claim. It's not surprising because it doesn't add up and he doesn't have access to any information that would allow him to calculate how many bullet ballots were cast in any race, let alone how many were cast for Trump. All the numbers show is that the maximum number of bullet ballots cast for Trump can't exceed the difference in the total number of votes in the presidential race and the total number of votes cast in the governor's race.

Indeed, Spoonamore's illogic is on display when he tries to compare his plucked from thin air numbers to what he says is the usual number of bullet ballots -- a number that is based on how many voters only bother to vote in a presidential race and ignore all other races.