Do some states allow voters to change their vote after it has already been cast?

A few states allow a voter to change their vote after it has already been cast. The voter may request that election officials invalidate their ballot through a process known as “spoiling" (the word also applies to the replacement process when a ballot has been damaged). Then the voter may cast a new ballot.

Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin and some Connecticut towns allow absentee voters to spoil their ballot and submit a new one. In New York, a voter may cast a new ballot in-person and request that their previous ballot be spoiled. Several other states allow a voter to spoil a ballot as long as the initial ballot hasn’t yet been returned or processed. Each state has different deadlines for ballot spoiling requests.

In the 2020 presidential election, 53,000 ballots have been spoiled so far in Michigan—mostly due to damage and printing errors, not because voters are changing their minds.