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Hanging chad
The little pieces of paper dangling from this ballot are called hanging chads.
hanging chad
voting and elections
hanging chad, a chadāthe small piece of a paper produced in punching paper tape or cardsāthat has not completely detached. When paper ballots are used in elections, hanging chads may lead to voting discrepancies. Hanging chads played a major role in the United States presidential election of 2000, when partially punched ballots that were not read by voting machines led, in part, to calls for a recount in Florida. The manual recounts ordered by the Florida Supreme Court were ultimately ended by the Supreme Court of the United States as a result of the case Bush v. Gore.

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