Legal Definitions - exhausted ballot

An exhausted ballot is a preferential vote on which all the ranked candidates have already been elected or eliminated. This means that the voter's ballot no longer has any impact on the outcome of the election.

For example, in an election with three candidates, a voter may rank their choices as follows: 1) Candidate A, 2) Candidate B, 3) Candidate C. If Candidate A is eliminated in the first round of counting and the voter's vote is transferred to Candidate B, but Candidate B is also eliminated in the second round, the voter's ballot becomes exhausted because all their ranked choices have been eliminated.

An exhausted ballot is also known as an exhausted vote.