ESPN

In case you have been away from your television set for the past few months and have been lucky enough to avoid the multitude of robotic phone calls issued to remind you, allow me to be the first to alert you to the fact that today is Election Day.

Now, regardless of which party or candidate you support, because of the complex rules that govern our electoral process, there's a chance your vote might not be worth as much as that of a voter who lives in another state. For example, if only 10 percent of the registered voters of New York vote for Candidate X, that's more votes than Candidate Y would get if he got the vote of every single voter in Delaware -- and yet, Candidate X would be sitting there with a goose egg on the electoral college scoreboard. But the majority of people casting votes in this election don't have a firm grasp on exactly how this process works.

It's reminiscent of the scoring systems in some fantasy football leagues. Many a fantasy owner still hasn't been able to wrap his head around the simplest of scoring concepts, even after years of play. For example, if you award one point for every 10 rushing yards, a player who gets 29 yards gets two -- not three -- points. There's no rounding up or partial points, just as the referees in an NFL game aren't going to award the offense a first down just for getting the football close to the first-down marker.

There is one quirk of fantasy scoring that always causes confusion, and this past week, we saw seven examples of this head-scratcher in action. Abram Elam, Terrell Suggs, Jacques Reeves, Antrel Rolle, Will Allen, Mike Jenkins and Jabari Greer each took an interception to the house for a pick-six this past Sunday, causing multiple queries to appear in my mailbox.

Steve from Chicago explains why all these scores caused a big headache for his league: "Hi, AJ. Two years ago, we started a keeper league on another Web site. Per that site's rules, if Team A has an interception or fumble recovery and returns it for a touchdown, those six points do not count against the 'points allowed' of Team B. Last year, we made the switch to ESPN, and we are using ESPN again this year. Per ESPN's rules, the 'points allowed' for a defense is the final score of the opposing team (without regard to defensive scores). One owner is arguing that, while we did change Web sites, we did not vote on a rule change and that the scoring should be adjusted to reflect the original rules used when the league was set up. The other owner argues that we need to play by the rules of the Web site we are using and that we have used ESPN's scoring for a year and a half with the issue never being raised before. I agree that interceptions and fumbles returned for touchdowns should not count against the opposing defense (since they weren't even on the field) but am hesitant to change a rule we have played with for a year and a half (even though we didn't know it). Your thoughts?"

Well, first of all, it's amazing to me that it took so long for this to become an issue in your league, Steve. It's not like this is a rare occurrence, although we don't usually see so many examples in one day. I think it's clear that since nobody noticed anything until now, your league rules did change, and now you're stuck with ESPN's default ruling. To go back and dredge up the box scores of a half-season's worth of games is just not something you should be asked to do since, again, nobody seemed to notice anything was wrong before now. Whenever you change sites, there are bound to be differences in the way they do certain things. If you used to award points for combined rushing and receiving yards, that might not be an option when you move, and it's far easier for all parties involved (especially the commissioner) to simply change the rules to fit the new site's way of doing things. After all, we use fantasy Web sites to do the heavy lifting for us, and if we're going to have to adjust the scoring of nearly every player every week, we might as well do the whole thing by hand.

Now that that's out of the way, let's discuss Steve's opinion that there's something wrong with counting a pick-six against the defense. He's not alone in this view, but is he right? Dane from Kentucky also wrote in this week and took Steve's side: "Twice this year I've had a defense that was penalized because its offense threw a pick-six, adding points to the opponent's score. I feel these six points (seven, including the extra point) should not count against my defense since the defense was not on the field. In one game this cost me a tie, and in the other it did not affect the outcome but still rubbed me the wrong way."

I get what the issue is here. If I have the Jets' defense and after a touchback on the opening kickoff, Brett Favre forces a pass into double coverage that results in the Jets trailing 6-0 before my guys have even taken the field, why should I have to pay for his mistake? If anything, Favre should lose points for the interception and a few more just for good measure as punishment for his foolishness, shouldn't he? Of course, the defense is on the field when the extra point is attempted (or at least the special teams unit is, and most leagues use a defense/special teams), so would you exempt that point as well? The D/ST can always block the kick or stop a two-point conversion, right? If the argument is that the six points should be exempted because the defense had no chance at all to stop it from happening, surely you can't use that argument for the extra point, even if it comes as a direct result of the interception, can you?

The problem with exempting the pick-six from counting against the defense comes from this murky territory. Let's say Chad Pennington is driving the Dolphins down the field, and it's first-and-goal. He drops back to pass and starts to scramble, and he sees an open Greg Camarillo in the end zone. As he throws the ball, however, Ebenezer Ekuban tips the ball in the air and it ends up in the hands of Karl Paymah, who starts to run the ball the other way. Paymah goes the length of the field and looks like he's going to score, but a hustling Pennington never gives up his pursuit and, at the last possible moment, lunges forward and knocks Paymah out of bounds at the 1-yard line. On the next play, Jay Cutler scores on a quarterback sneak. Now, the defense was on the field for this score, and nobody would be able to argue the defense shouldn't be charged for these points -- and yet, if pick-sixes are exempt, you're effectively penalizing Miami's defense because Pennington hustled to make a defensive play. If he had not put any effort into the pursuit and let Paymah run it back, the defense wouldn't have been charged with the points. That simply doesn't seem right to me.

When you draft a team defense, it's just that -- the team's defense -- and that includes the defensive efforts of the offensive unit when it turns the ball over. That's why you get the points for a recovered fumble if a wide receiver strips a defensive back of the ball after he has intercepted a pass and gotten a little too greedy on the return. It's a fact of life: Sometimes your players lose points when it's not their fault. How many times has your quarterback thrown a pass that has hit the receiver right between the numbers, yet he has bobbled the ball and the pass has ended up in the arms of the defensive back? Yet we don't decide to not count the interception.

At the end of the day, if you're going to deduct fantasy points for "points allowed," you should count them all, whether Pennington was able to complete the touchdown-saving tackle or whether he just stood there while the other team celebrated its good fortune.

AJ Mass is a fantasy football, baseball and college basketball analyst for ESPN.com. You can e-mail him here.