How many Blank Ballots will be Cast in Todays Special Elections?

Experiment Time Folks.

Remember Libertarian Candidate for SecState David Chastian's investigation into blank ballots? In a nutshell, those are ballots that are cast by voters who went to the trouble to go to the polls and once in the booth, just could not make thier minds and do not vote after all. They just hand the data card over to thier poll worker and go thier merry way after wasting time waiting to not vote. You can re-read it here for a quick refresher.

The question of the day for the readership is:

How many blank ballots are going to be cast in todays special elections? With voter turn out predicted in the 5% range in district 49 and the 10% range in district 42, how many of these blank ballots will surface? The work done by David Chastain indicates an average of .8% in the surveyed single issue elections he's researched at the State Archives. .8% of the votes in a 10,000 vote contest equals about 80 votes. That wouldn't swing an election, would it? What if district 42 has a particularly crappy bunch of Diebolds? What if the blank ballot rate is closer to 3%? Would 300 blank votes influence the outcome?

We'll find out tonight while scrutinizing the returns with the other DeKalb Libertarians at the Famous Sports Pub in Toco Hills. Come on out and join in the fun!