We can all blame the Supremes for this. They eviscerated the Voting Rights Act and that set the tone to the GOP that shenanigans are perfectly ok IMHO.
Spoilt vote
In voting, a ballot is considered spoilt, spoiled, void, null, informal, invalid or stray if a law declares or an election authority determines that it is invalid and thus not included in the vote count. This may occur accidentally or deliberately. The total number of spoilt votes in a United States election has been called the residual vote. In Australia, such votes are generally referred to as informal votes, and in Canada they are referred to as rejected votes. In some jurisdictions spoilt vo...