Election Reform Briefing 10, “Solution or Problem? Provisional Ballots in 2004,” asserted that pre-election predictions that provisional ballots would become “the hanging chad” of last year’s election never came to pass – but only because of the final margin of victory in the presidential race. However, the report found enormous gaps in provisional ballot counting, usage and rules that suggest Congress’ cure for the ills of the 2000 election in Florida – eligible voters being turned away without recourse – might itself pose problems for voters and election officials nationwide.

The Help America Vote Act (HAVA) mandated the use of provisional ballots as a safeguard for voters who believed they were registered but whose names were not on voter rolls. While more than two-thirds of states had some safeguard in place for those voters prior to HAVA, November 2004 marked the first time every state and U.S. territory (except those with election-day registration or no voter registration) had provisional ballots available as well as methods by which voters could find out if their ballots were counted.

“The national mandate for provisional voting did not mean national uniformity,” said Doug Chapin, electionline’s director. “In fact, we found that whether a voter had his or her provisional ballot counted relied nearly as much on where they cast it as their actual registration status. Had the election been closer, this would have been a flashpoint for controversy. Our findings, however, suggest that the debate over provisional ballots is far from over.”

“If HAVA’s aim was to ensure no qualified and registered voter would ever again be turned away from a polling place without having the opportunity to vote,” Chapin continued, “this report shows that the patchwork of rules and practices on provisional voting might actually be frustrating rather than advancing the aims of HAVA.”

Among the findings:

* Provisional vote-counting varied widely among states, from a national high of 97 percent counted in Alaska to a low of 6 percent counted in Delaware. The report found a national average of 68 percent counted. While lacking any concrete data of the reasons for accepting or declining the votes, anecdotal reports from state and local election officials indicate some people were confused into thinking that provisional ballots could be used in lieu of registration. Those ballots were not counted.

* State rules had an impact on the percentage of provisional ballots counted. States that allowed voters to cast ballots outside of their correct precinct but inside of their jurisdiction counted an average of 70 percent of provisional ballots. States that disqualified any provisional ballots counted outside of a voter’s correct precinct counted 60 percent of the ballots.

* Statewide voter registration databases led to fewer provisional ballots cast, presumably because each voter’s registration record was tracked better. However, of those that still needed to cast provisional ballots, there is no evidence to suggest that a fewer percentage of provisional ballots were counted in states with statewide voter registration databases than in states without them.

* Inconsistent application of rules and procedures might have had an impact within states. Some counties sought out provisional voters to have them fix problems with their registration forms that kept them off of precinct lists.

Despite the disparities, provisional voting could nonetheless be considered a qualified success. More than 1.6 million fail-safe ballots were cast, with nearly 1.1 million (68 percent) counted. In Florida and Ohio alone, this meant nearly 200,000 voters who would have been turned away from polling places if their names could not be found in 2000 had a chance to cast a ballot in 2004.

From Rebecca W. Rimel, President & CEO
The Pew Charitable Trusts

As part of its mission to serve the public interest, and to help increase public trust and confidence in U.S. elections, The Pew Charitable Trusts has invested over the last nine years in nonpartisan efforts to help reform the role money plays in campaigns. We are pleased that our involvement, along with that of many others, could play a positive role in helping to spark a national dialogue and ultimately, agreement on options for change.

Our campaign finance reform grants were focused on work that helped to inform the American public and its leaders about the impact of soft money, the lack of disclosure and the lax enforcement of laws. We joined with leading academic and nonprofit institutions across the ideological spectrum to document the scope of the issue and then supported them to make the resulting research broadly accessible to the public. Over the nine years, these grantees, among others, included The American Enterprise Institute, the League of Women Voters Education Fund, Brigham Young University, the Center for Responsive Politics, The George Washington University, and the University of Utah.

Any assertion that we tried to hide our support of campaign finance reform grantees is false. As we do with all of our work, we have fully disclosed our support for grantees working on campaign finance reform in a variety of forms over the last nine years, including in organizational publications and tax forms, as well as on our Web site, where a searchable database of grants has been available since 1998.