Suffrage issued for candidacies, as well as blank votes, which do not incur any anomaly or alteration that takes it to be considered null. They are considered valid votes those who are cast according to the requirements established by law, without manipulation, variations, duplication or infringements. They are validly deposited in the ballot box, and computed in the count as votes effectively registered by candidacies or as blank votes.

In this sense, we can consider “affirmative vote” or “positive vote” this expression of the political will of a voter expressed towards a candidacy through official ballots. In some countries, the electoral regime even allows to consider valid these votes even if they contain erasures, additions or substitutions that not disclose the manifestation of the will of the citizen – as it happens in Argentina – (see also: null vote).

If someone casts, in a same envelope, two ballots for the same candidacy, it will be considered valid vote only one of them. Equally, in the case of those elections in which it is necessary to mark the candidacy or names by which it elects, they will be valid those votes in which the signal is carried as stipulated in the space determined for such purposes, and with the required mark (example of ballot papers in Chile, where a specific brand is required).

On this last issue, to promote the count and the validity of the votes, in some countries some permissive measures are allowed, for example, the votes of citizens who demonstrate a clear willingness to vote occupying all the space of the ballot and not only a few boxes, as the electoral law could contemplate at first (such is the case of Mexico). This type of more permissive measures facilitates suffrage, but also clarifies the supervision by members of electoral administration.

All valid votes must have the same value in an electoral process, in such a way that they are not weighted, but they record the same effects in the counting regardless of the place and form in which they were issued, as a manifestation of the extension of the right to vote. Quite different is the matter related to effects that these votes may arise depending on the various elements of the electoral system (see also: electoral system).

Doubts and confusion around the consideration of the validity of a vote are frequent in those electoral processes in which new elements are introduced, or those in which ballots include specific elements that voters don’t know well. In this way, for example, we could find certain confusion in those elections requiring marking of one or several candidates when the electoral system provides for other processes the presentation of closed and blocked lists that only require the voter to choose the ballot and cast the vote in the proper envelope.

In any case, the determination of the validity or invalidity of the vote will depend on the provisions of the electoral legislation applicable to each process, and they will be members of the electoral management bodies who intervene, in the first instance, in the consideration of the validity for the purpose of the scrutiny.