Ballot exhaustion

In the alternative vote, ballot exhaustion occurs when a voter's ballot can no longer be counted, because all candidates on that ballot have been eliminated from an election.

Contributors to ballot exhaustion include:

1. Voter exhaustion (i.e. time or effort constraints),^[1][2]
2. Protest votes intended to oppose all unranked candidates,^[3][4]
3. Strategic truncation,
4. Jurisdictions that impose limits on how many preferences voters can express,^[4][5]
5. The elimination of popular candidates who have many 2nd, 3rd, etc. preferences in the early stages of a vote.

This may occur because the voter chooses not to fill out a complete preference ranking,^[6] or because the ballot format itself limits the number of preferences that may be expressed.^[7][8] This results in "exhausted" or "inactive" ballots.^[9] For example, in Minneapolis, the city limits voters to 3 rankings of candidates on ballots for city elections.^[10]