Iowa Administrative Code
Agency 721 - Secretary of State
Division II - Elections
Chapter 26 - Counting Votes
Rule 721-26.3 - Reporting Overvotes and Undervotes
The reports from computerized voting equipment and canvass summaries for precinct, county and state canvasses of votes shall include the number of overvotes and undervotes for each office and question on the ballot. Undervotes and overvotes shall not be reported on abstracts of votes prepared pursuant to Iowa Code sections 50.24 and 50.39.
Example: For a special election, 100 people voted using an optical scan voting system. The printed report from the machine tally of votes should be in substantially the following form:
Number of voters = 100
| City Official | |
| Candidate 1 | 24 |
| Candidate 2 | 51 |
| Candidate 3 | 12 |
| Write-in votes | 8 |
| Overvotes | 2 |
| Undervotes | 3 |
The vote tally portion of the abstract of votes for this office would read as follows:
For the office of city official, there were ninety-five (95) votes cast as follows:
Candidate 1 received twenty-four (24) votes.
Candidate 2 received fifty-one (51) votes.
Candidate 3 received twelve (12) votes.
Scattering received eight (8) votes.
