Provisional voting results when a voter has shown up to an Early Voting site or an Election Day polling place to vote and for whatever reason their eligibility cannot be verified, they do not have a valid form of photo identification, or in any other circumstance where a voter insists upon voting a ballot but election officials are unable to legally tabulate it immediately.
The Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA) made it Federal law that any voter who is determined to be ineligible to vote normally at a polling place for any reason must be provided the opportunity to vote a provisional ballot if one is requested and they attest to their eligibility to vote. The provisional process acts as a safeguard against polling place clerical errors or other erroneous circumstances related to verifying a voter’s eligibility resulting in a voter being disenfranchised by mistake. It also serves as assurance that election officials at each polling place are not deciding who can and cannot vote arbitrarily.
The provisional process, as it is in North Carolina (although procedures are fairly consistent across all states with slightly differing situational use cases and exceptions for states who already had similar processes in place prior to 2002), involves a voter filling out a ballot and answering a precinct judge’s questions to provide information necessary for Board of Elections office staff to research the voter’s eligibility to vote.
Once the process is completed, the judge seals the ballot in an envelope and keeps it in a separate secure container designated as ‘provisional’. Provisional ballots are never tabulated at the time they are filled out, as this would defeat their purpose entirely.
Provisional ballots are returned to each County Board of Elections office on Election Night. Each corresponding voter’s situation is subsequently analyzed over the course of the following week (7 or 10 days) prior to County Canvass Day, the date upon which results are finalized at a county level.
Part of the information required of the voter during the provisional voting process is their contact information. During the provisional research process, a provisional voter may be contacted by the Board of Elections office in order to obtain more information if necessary.
On Canvass Day, research is presented to each respective county’s Board of Elections, identifying whether each ballot is or is not considered by the office staff to be valid with accompanying legal reasoning. After the final determination is made on any ballots for which a determination must be made by the Board, the valid ballots are tabulated using the DS850 Central Count Tabulator and added to final county election totals.
When a voter votes a provisional ballot, they are also given a set of instructions explaining how they may check to see if their ballot was accepted or not after it has been considered on Canvass Day. Elections personnel will not directly contact provisional voters with this information.
