Thousands of American citizens have been purged from voting
registries or will face new obstacles to voting in several states, a
situation which has drawn attention to a fail safe mechanism put in
place by federal law to help ensure all eligible voters are counted:
provisional ballots.
In response to reports that states (including Indiana, Georgia, and
North Dakota) had thrown up roadblocks to potential voters in the
lead-up to the 6 November 2018 midterm elections, social media users
sought to spread awareness to their fellow Americans about the back-up
plan for those who believed themselves to be registered and eligible to
vote but were turned away at the polls nevertheless: “Give me a
provisional ballot with a receipt as required by law when requested”:
Memorize, take a screen shot, write in sharpie on your arm these magic words to use IF YOU ARE TURNED AWAY AT THE POLLS: https://t.co/FsQq5Icfol
Although states vary in how they handle them, federal law requires
election officials to provide voters who do not appear on registries or
whose eligibility has been challenged by election officials at the polls
to be given provisional ballots, according to Section 302 of the Help
America Vote Act (HAVA).
“The deal with the provisional ballots is that so long as you believe
yourself to be registered, you have the right to a provisional ballot.
Polling workers are supposed to offer this to you,” said Allegra
Chapman, senior counsel and director of voting and elections for the
government accountability organization Common Cause.
In some states,
Chapman said, voters can update their registration information on the
spot. If it’s possible to do so and vote by regular ballot, that is the
optimal approach. If voters must use provisional ballots, Chapman added
that they absolutely should request receipts if they aren’t
automatically offered. The provisional ballot receipts provide voters
the necessary information to follow up and find out if their votes were
counted. Common Cause officials urge voters who encounter any problems
on election day to call 866-OUR-VOTE to speak to trained volunteers or
text the words “election protection” to 97779 for voting assistance.
In Georgia, a 2017 “exact match”
law allowed the registration of voters to be suspended and then
cancelled if the information on their government-issued identification
varied even slightly from the information on their voter registration
forms. According to court documents, “Under this ‘exact match’ protocol,
the transposition of a single letter or number, deletion or addition of
a hyphen or apostrophe, the accidental entry of an extra character or
space, and the use of a familiar name like “Tom” instead of ‘Thomas’
will cause a no match result.” And the burden of rectifying the issue
falls on voters.
Georgia secretary of state and gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp is currently being sued
by a coalition of civil rights groups who claim the “exact match” law
has hampered the registration of 51,111 voters, 80.15% of whom are
black, Latino, or Asian, and some critics have called on Kemp to resign.
Also in 2017, Indiana Secretary of State Connie Lawson dropped
roughly half a million entries from voter registries in what she called
an effort to clean up an outdated list. In June 2018, a federal court blocked
the state from implementing a 2017 law that would have allowed election
officials to cancel registrations without notice if voters’ names
appeared on an interstate database meant to flag potential double
voting.
The database, Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck, has been criticized as being unreliable, while the court ruled the Indiana law violated federal law. Indiana officials have been accused of violating that court order and did not respond to our questions about it.
In North Dakota, the U.S. Supreme Court on 9 October 2018 let stand
a state law requiring voters to present identification listing their
residential addresses. Because many among the state’s large Native
American minority use post office (P.O.) boxes and not street addresses
on reservations, the Supreme Court decision that allowing the voter ID
requirements to remain in place through the November 2018 election has
caused many to fear that tribal members will be collectively
disenfranchised on election day.
According to the North Dakota Secretary of State’s office, voters
whose identifications don’t include their residential address can bring
the following
supplemental documents to the polls if they show a residential address:
A current utility bill; a current bank statement; a check issued by a
federal, state, local, or tribal government (including those issued by
BIA for a tribe located in North Dakota, any other tribal agency or
entity, or any other document that sets forth the tribal member’s name,
date of birth, and current North Dakota residential address); a
paycheck; or a document issued by a federal, state, local, or tribal
government (including those issued by BIA for a tribe located in North
Dakota, any other tribal agency or entity, or any other document that
sets forth the tribal member’s name, date of birth, and current North
Dakota residential address).
North Dakota voters may also cast provisional ballots but must
present an acceptable form of identification to local election officials
within six days in order for their votes to be counted. Sen. Heidi
Hietkamp also introduced a bill
that would, among other things, enable voting precincts to treat tribal
ID cards like state and local-issued forms of identification for
purposes of voting.
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