Overvote
noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A case in which a voter has marked a ballot for more choices than allowed by the rules US
"An overvote that took the form of punching Gore's chad and then writing his name (or Lieberman's) in the place for a write-in candidate would unambiguously manifest the voter's intention to vote for Gore."
- 2 A case in which more votes are cast in a voter's name than allowed under the rules
"Overvotes are a relatively common phenomenon for shares held in a street name."
- 1 To spoil a ballot by marking it for more choices than allowed by the rules US
"[…] a poll worker can manually override the program and accept the ballot, even though it has been overvoted or undervoted."
- 2 To cast more votes than allowed under the rules
"I know a great deal of difficulty ensues, and frequently brokers' shares are overvoted."
- 3 To outvote or overrule obsolete
"Caleb and Joshua would have been overvoted by almost six hundred thousand Israelites; […]"
Example
More examples"An overvote that took the form of punching Gore's chad and then writing his name (or Lieberman's) in the place for a write-in candidate would unambiguously manifest the voter's intention to vote for Gore."
Etymology
From over- + vote.
More for "overvote"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.