What happens if someone votes for a defunct candidate on the Presidental Primary ballot?

You will have wasted your vote. Hell, forget new ballots. They could have hired a few people to just line through the name. Simple.

You’ll spoil your vote. It would be no different from writing your own name under the last option with a drawn on check box.

Well, new ballots are expensive to reprint. If you were a Republican, Jeb! would still be on your ballot. And Rand Paul was on the South Carolina ballot, and got votes, even though he suspended his campaign.

States usually start the printing process a month before they are sent.

My perspective is that I would rather not pay for reprinting ballots. Just more government waste.

I suppose you could use the vote as a protest vote to show that you still think the candidate is the best choice.

My hope would be that those entering the voting booth were at least informed enough to know which candidates were still running and which weren’t, perhaps a forlorn hope I know, but if they don’t well perhaps they should not be voting.

I can’t believe I’m going to defend the government but on this one, there is a valid reason. Ballots are sent to printing months ahead of time and there is no way they could keep up with last minute changes. They have deadlines to get your name on the ballot, that’s why Joe Biden had to make his decision to run last year lest he miss the deadline. same principle applies to dropping out.

In reality, O’Malley suspended his campaign but is still a valid choice. If you vote for him, I suspect the vote will be counted as a vote for O’Malley. Just because he’s no longer campaigning doesn’t mean he’s not a valid choice.

I will add here that we live in a world of anything can happen and what if something happens to Bern or Hill? Then it is a whole other race and O’Mally’s campaign suddenly has new life.

@Jaxk got it.

But aside from that, and to be brutally honest here, who cares about the wishes of a voter who votes for a nominal / former candidate who hasn’t been active in weeks or months?

I’m thinking that we should make the voting process at least nominally more difficult, maybe by placing the candidates’ names in anagrams and omitting any Party reference. If people plan to vote, then they should know who they plan to vote for and be able to find that person’s name, and to hell with “Party” levers to make it easy.

If you ask me, voting is already too easy: any idiot can do it, and too many do!

It was pretty awesome. Rand Paul dropped out a few days before N.H. I think it was on CNN where they were on some bus full of college kids coming back from after voting. So they ask this kid who he voted for and he proudly proclaims “Rand Paul” and then the news person informs him that Paul had dropped out a few days before. Then everyone starts laughing and the guy just looks gutted.

Same difference as a write in. It probably won’t count toward anyone being elected, unless some secret underground faction exists waiting to vote that person. If they get the votes, they will win.