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CINCINNATI ENQUIRER EXCLUSIVE: Provisional ballots might put a kink in Election Day
Written by
Barry M. Horstman
A new Ohio program intended to make voting easier could keep the presidential election in doubt until late November if the national outcome hinges on the state’s 18 electoral votes.
Under Secretary of State Jon Husted’s initiative to send absentee ballot applications to nearly 7 million registered voters across Ohio, more than 800,000 people so far have asked for but not yet completed an absentee ballot for the Nov. 6 election.
Anyone who does not return an absentee ballot, deciding instead to vote at the polls, will be required to cast a provisional ballot.
That’s so officials may verify that they did not vote absentee and also show up at the polls.
By state law, provisional ballots may not be counted until at least Nov. 17.
That means if Ohio’s electoral votes would be decisive in the race between President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the state could keep the nation in suspense for several weeks after the election.
“That would be called my nightmare scenario,” said Amy Searcy, director of the Hamilton County Board of Elections.
But it is also, election experts warn, a distinctly possible scenario if the vote in Ohio – and nationwide – is close.
“We could easily see a situation in which the nation has to wait for Ohio because of provisionals,” said Ed Foley, an Ohio State University law professor and nationally respected expert on election law. “We ought to start thinking about those what-if scenarios now rather than the Wednesday morning after the election.”
Through Friday, about 1.43 million Ohioans had requested an absentee ballot, but only 618,861 had returned their vote, according to Husted’s office.
Both numbers will grow by Nov. 3, the deadline for most Ohioans to request an absentee ballot.
Another nearly 190,000 people had cast absentee ballots in person at their county boards of elections or designated early voting centers in Ohio’s 88 counties.
Many of the 800,000-plus voters who have not yet returned their completed absentee ballot likely plan to wait until closer to Election Day to do so.
The current wide gap between requested and returned ballots, however, raises the possibility that many who opt to go to their precinct Nov. 6 will be forced to vote provisionally.
The circumstances that typically produce provisional ballots – cast when a voter’s eligibility is in question, often after someone has moved or changed their name without updating their registration – also can be expected next month. Four years ago, nearly 207,000 provisional votes were cast statewide.
Those “normal” provisional votes and ones stemming from unused absentee ballots could push that overall number higher this year.
In addition, another potentially sizable chunk of ballots also will be uncounted on Election Night: absentees postmarked by Nov. 5 and that reach election boards within the 10 post-election days allowed.
Having hundreds of thousands of votes effectively on hold would keep the presidential election in limbo if Ohio’s electoral votes are needed for either Obama or Romney to reach the 270-vote majority required.
“I really hope that doesn’t happen – but it could,” said Tim Burke, chairman of both the Hamilton County Democratic Party and the county board of elections. “And we know that provisional votes can change an election.”
The last presidential election that did not have a clear winner the morning after was the 2000 race between then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore, when the result remained uncertain for weeks because of the “hanging chad” debacle in Florida. Before that, one has to go back to the 19th century to find a similar situation.
Husted staffers and other officials say, based on recent elections, they expect the number of unused absentee ballots to shrink substantially by Election Day. In the 2008 presidential election, 1.81 million absentee ballots were requested and 1.74 million – a gap of only about 70,000 – were actually cast.
But there is one significant difference this year. In past elections, most Ohioans had to proactively request an absentee ballot. This year, Husted simplified the process by sending an application to registered voters statewide.
An unintended consequence of that could be to increase the number of people who ask for an absentee ballot but do not use it, not realizing that means they must vote provisionally at the polls.
Provisional votes long have been one of the most problematic areas of Ohio elections, primarily because tens of thousands routinely are disqualified by relatively minor missteps by voters or polls workers. Four years ago, nearly 40,000 provisionals – roughly one in five – were invalidated for various reasons.
The state’s historically large number of provisional votes – Ohio’s total in recent elections has been second only to much-bigger California – creates the possibility of a days-long wait to learn the winner in close elections.
In some local races, ballots counted in the weeks after the election have turned the candidate ahead on election night into a loser.
Provisionals and additional absentees, for example, changed the outcomes in the 2008 Hamilton County Recorder race and a 2010 county Juvenile Court contest.
They would hold the same potential on a statewide level if this year’s presidential contest mirrors 1976, when Democrat Jimmy Carter carried Ohio over President Gerald Ford by only 11,116 votes out of nearly 4.1 million cast.
“With as many provisional votes as Ohio usually has, you have an electoral system with a built-in possibility that you might not have an outcome on Wednesday,” OSU’s Foley said.
If that proves to be the case, “then wait the nation must – as patiently as possible,” he said.
This fall, Ohio’s official count of all ballots, which counties must begin between Nov. 17 and 21, must be completed by Nov. 27.
“Waiting 10 days or so doesn’t mean anything’s inherently wrong – it means the system is working precisely as it was intended to work,” Foley said.
“But it could be difficult to get people to see that.”
http://news.cincinnati.com/article/...=mod|newswell|text|FRONTPAGE|s&nclick_check=1
Written by
Barry M. Horstman
A new Ohio program intended to make voting easier could keep the presidential election in doubt until late November if the national outcome hinges on the state’s 18 electoral votes.
Under Secretary of State Jon Husted’s initiative to send absentee ballot applications to nearly 7 million registered voters across Ohio, more than 800,000 people so far have asked for but not yet completed an absentee ballot for the Nov. 6 election.
Anyone who does not return an absentee ballot, deciding instead to vote at the polls, will be required to cast a provisional ballot.
That’s so officials may verify that they did not vote absentee and also show up at the polls.
By state law, provisional ballots may not be counted until at least Nov. 17.
That means if Ohio’s electoral votes would be decisive in the race between President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the state could keep the nation in suspense for several weeks after the election.
“That would be called my nightmare scenario,” said Amy Searcy, director of the Hamilton County Board of Elections.
But it is also, election experts warn, a distinctly possible scenario if the vote in Ohio – and nationwide – is close.
“We could easily see a situation in which the nation has to wait for Ohio because of provisionals,” said Ed Foley, an Ohio State University law professor and nationally respected expert on election law. “We ought to start thinking about those what-if scenarios now rather than the Wednesday morning after the election.”
Through Friday, about 1.43 million Ohioans had requested an absentee ballot, but only 618,861 had returned their vote, according to Husted’s office.
Both numbers will grow by Nov. 3, the deadline for most Ohioans to request an absentee ballot.
Another nearly 190,000 people had cast absentee ballots in person at their county boards of elections or designated early voting centers in Ohio’s 88 counties.
Many of the 800,000-plus voters who have not yet returned their completed absentee ballot likely plan to wait until closer to Election Day to do so.
The current wide gap between requested and returned ballots, however, raises the possibility that many who opt to go to their precinct Nov. 6 will be forced to vote provisionally.
The circumstances that typically produce provisional ballots – cast when a voter’s eligibility is in question, often after someone has moved or changed their name without updating their registration – also can be expected next month. Four years ago, nearly 207,000 provisional votes were cast statewide.
Those “normal” provisional votes and ones stemming from unused absentee ballots could push that overall number higher this year.
In addition, another potentially sizable chunk of ballots also will be uncounted on Election Night: absentees postmarked by Nov. 5 and that reach election boards within the 10 post-election days allowed.
Having hundreds of thousands of votes effectively on hold would keep the presidential election in limbo if Ohio’s electoral votes are needed for either Obama or Romney to reach the 270-vote majority required.
“I really hope that doesn’t happen – but it could,” said Tim Burke, chairman of both the Hamilton County Democratic Party and the county board of elections. “And we know that provisional votes can change an election.”
The last presidential election that did not have a clear winner the morning after was the 2000 race between then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore, when the result remained uncertain for weeks because of the “hanging chad” debacle in Florida. Before that, one has to go back to the 19th century to find a similar situation.
Husted staffers and other officials say, based on recent elections, they expect the number of unused absentee ballots to shrink substantially by Election Day. In the 2008 presidential election, 1.81 million absentee ballots were requested and 1.74 million – a gap of only about 70,000 – were actually cast.
But there is one significant difference this year. In past elections, most Ohioans had to proactively request an absentee ballot. This year, Husted simplified the process by sending an application to registered voters statewide.
An unintended consequence of that could be to increase the number of people who ask for an absentee ballot but do not use it, not realizing that means they must vote provisionally at the polls.
Provisional votes long have been one of the most problematic areas of Ohio elections, primarily because tens of thousands routinely are disqualified by relatively minor missteps by voters or polls workers. Four years ago, nearly 40,000 provisionals – roughly one in five – were invalidated for various reasons.
The state’s historically large number of provisional votes – Ohio’s total in recent elections has been second only to much-bigger California – creates the possibility of a days-long wait to learn the winner in close elections.
In some local races, ballots counted in the weeks after the election have turned the candidate ahead on election night into a loser.
Provisionals and additional absentees, for example, changed the outcomes in the 2008 Hamilton County Recorder race and a 2010 county Juvenile Court contest.
They would hold the same potential on a statewide level if this year’s presidential contest mirrors 1976, when Democrat Jimmy Carter carried Ohio over President Gerald Ford by only 11,116 votes out of nearly 4.1 million cast.
“With as many provisional votes as Ohio usually has, you have an electoral system with a built-in possibility that you might not have an outcome on Wednesday,” OSU’s Foley said.
If that proves to be the case, “then wait the nation must – as patiently as possible,” he said.
This fall, Ohio’s official count of all ballots, which counties must begin between Nov. 17 and 21, must be completed by Nov. 27.
“Waiting 10 days or so doesn’t mean anything’s inherently wrong – it means the system is working precisely as it was intended to work,” Foley said.
“But it could be difficult to get people to see that.”
http://news.cincinnati.com/article/...=mod|newswell|text|FRONTPAGE|s&nclick_check=1
