Helen Spoon of Paddock Hills counted the punch holes on her ballot card over and over again Tuesday, determined not to have her ballot tossed out for voting for more than nine Cincinnati City Council candidates. There were 2,279 of her fellow Cincinnati voters who were not so meticulous.

        The votes cast for Cincinnati council candidates by those voters were not counted because, faced with the names of 26 candidates, they voted for more than nine.

        “Over-voting,” the elections officials call it.

        “Forget the "hanging chad,' the biggest problem we have is over-voting,” said Tim Burke, chairman of the Hamilton County Board of Elections.

        The 2,279 voters who voted for more than nine council candidates equal nearly 3 percent of the total number of voters who showed up for Tuesday's elections.

        Over-voting is a common situation in any election where voters are asked to choose a limited number of candidates in a field race. In the council race two years ago, 2.25 percent of those who showed up over-voted.

        The over-voting phenomenon has a companion, called “under-voting,” that is also common.

        A voter who under-votes chooses to pick less than the nine candidates allowed in the City Council race; but, unlike the over-voter, the under-voter's ballots are counted by election officials.

        Under-voting is a part of < Cincinnati City Council elections. This year, the average voter chose 6 1/2 candidates from the field of 26.

        The problems of over-voting, combined with the tendency of voters not to pick nine, are two reasons some Cincinnati political leaders, such as former State Rep. William Mallory Sr., would like to see the city switch from at-large council elections to a district system. In that system, council candidates would go head to head, or run in races with a limited number of candidates.

        “It is impossible for every voter to know the positions of 26 candidates on every issue,” said Mr. Mallory, who, in the 1990s, brought an unsuccessful federal lawsuit to try to force a change in Cincinnati's council election system.

        “So people just give up and vote for the ones they know,” Mr. Mallory said.

        Former Mayor Dwight Tillery, who formed the African-American Political Caucus this year, said there is also something wrong with an at-large system where only three of nine council members elected Tuesday are African- American and only two are women. African-Americans make up 43 percent of the city's population.

        “We ought to have a system that guarantees some kind of representation based on race, gender and economics, so it doesn't cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to win,” Mr. Tillery said.

        The political parties often unintentionally encourage under-voting by fielding short slates of council candidates.

        This year, the Democratic Party fielded nine endorsed candidates, so loyal Democrats could punch holes next to their names and not have any votes left over for Republicans, Charterites or independents.

        But the Republican party endorsed only five, while the Charter Committee slate was smaller still at three candidates.

        Even voters like Mrs. Spoon, the Paddock Hills woman who so carefully counted her punch holes, ended up voting for only eight council candidates.

        “In the end, that's all I wanted,” she said.

        Over-voting is almost guaranteed to happen in a punch-card ballot system. But, if Hamilton County had touch-screen electronic voting, over-voting would disappear.

        Electronic voting machines — now in use in Franklin County (Columbus) — would prevent a voter from voting for more than the allowed number of candidates.

        Vendors who have tried to sell electronic voting systems to Hamilton County have given the county quotes ranging from $8 million to $15 million to convert the entire county.

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