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In voting, a ballot is considered to be spoilt, void, or null if it is regarded by the election authorities to be invalid and thus not included in the tally during vote counting. The error(s) responsible for spoiling a ballot can range from voting for more than one candidate in a plurality voting system, leaving the vote blank, to defacing the ballot in a manner that makes it uncountable. Spoilt votes may the result of a deliberate or accidental act by the voter--some proportion are likely protest votes, especially in systems where voting is compulsory. Paper-based voting systems are thought to be more susceptible to unintentional errors that spoil ballots; some paper-based voting systems and most DRE voting machines can notify voters of undervotes and overvotes. The validity of the election may be questioned if there is an unusually high proportion of spoilt votes.
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