hanging chad

plural hanging chads

1. A piece of punch-through paper on a voting ballot that has not fully detached from the card-stock.

   Even that number, of course, is open to argument: How do we count a partially punched ballot, the so-called hanging chad?

   2014, Jordan Ellenberg, How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking, page 401

   3 more examples

   The Gore campaign hopes there are enough ballots with unattached or “hanging” chads next to Gore’s name to give him the lead in Florida — and with it, the presidency.

   2000 November 14, “Presidency Hinges on Chad”, in ABC News

   They were introduced to the mysteries of the 'hanging chad' and left wondering at the absence of both a federal electoral agency and a uniform ballot paper and the fact that the electoral processes in the vital State of Florida appeared to be in the partisan hands of a brother of one of the two candidates.

   2002, Prisoners as Citizens: Human Rights in Australian Prisons, page 308

   But, I mean, for me here's the basic thing. How plausible is it that a woman would fix an election because she's obsessed with me? I mean, where's the hanging chad?

   2006, 01:44:42 from the start, in Man of the Year