Remember, people are allowed to go back and get a clean ballot in the cases where they made a mistake. Those partially filled out ballots make a great tool for fraud. Thus systems tend to ignore such ballots completely.

The disenfranchising effect of this anti-fraud measure is probably accidental, but makes life difficult for us opt-outers.

2) Nor can I refuse to vote on certain items in the ballot, and vote for others: ballots that don’t contain votes for all races are typically thrown out as being damaged.

Really? I wasn’t aware of that. When I’ve voted in the past I’ve always tried to simply not vote on races I haven’t studied (such as local school board and other stuff). Does that mean my ballot is considered “damaged”?

There are several races where I’ll probably have to do as you suggest.

The Senate race is particularly bad. There’s Mark Udall (D) who might be acceptable on social issues but terrible economic issues. Bob Schaffer (R) might be acceptable on economic issues but terrible on social issues.

Then there’s the third party candidates from the Green Party and the so-called Constitution Party. As a Libertarian, I cannot support either of these candidates for very obvious reasons.

There are no candidates in this race which will stay out of the bed room and the board room. NOTA may be the only choice I could make and still respect myself in the morning.