Tag Archives: provisional ballot

After 7:30 p.m. today, it’s no longer about which candidate you voted for. It’s about which votes get counted. If today’s presidential election in Ohio is too close to call, the state’s complicated process for counting provisional ballots will likely face national scrutiny. The process will play out slowly and painstakingly over the next couple weeks, and in the end, Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted ultimately could be the person who decides which provisional ballots must be counted and which will be tossed. “That will get dicey,” said Edward Foley, director of Election Law @ Moritz, a program at the Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law. “That just shows a structural weakness in our system.”

Editorials: Ohio’s Crucial Election Court Fights | The New Republic

It’s a crisp, clear, and cold day in Ohio, a state that everyone believes to be critical. On the ground floor of the Ohio State University building I’m in right now, there’s a long line of students waiting to cast their votes, some for over an hour we’re told. It will be a long day for them, and it could be a long night for all of us if it’s close. Well before the first ballots were cast, the candidates and their allies were in court fighting over the rules. In Ohio, there were two especially important court orders issued in the weeks before Election Day.

National: As election looms, many voters fear process is compromised | SouthCoastToday.com

Only days before millions of Americans cast their ballots, a climate of suspicion hangs over Tuesday’s national elections. Accusations of partisan dirty tricks and concerns about long voter lines, voting equipment failures and computer errors are rampant, particularly in key battleground states such as Ohio and Colorado, where absentee and provisional ballots could decide a close election. “Those will be the states that are the most prone to confusion and chaos and contesting if the election is close or within what some people call the ‘margin of litigation,’ ” said Charles Stewart III, a political science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Florida: Glitch in Florida’s Voter Registration System Can Disenfranchise Absentee Voters | Huffington Post

A couple weeks ago, when we were investigating for our academic research patterns in rejection rates of absentee and provisional ballots cast in the August 14, 2012, primary election, we discovered some anomalies in the Florida statewide voter file. Upon further investigation, and after following up with some county Supervisors of Elections, we believe that we have found a troubling anomaly in Florida’s Voter Registration System. This oversight that we stumbled upon has the potential to disenfranchise registered voters who mailed in absentee ballots from their counties of residence and then subsequently updated their voter registration addresses with new information to reflect having moved. By being vigilant and updating their voter registration information to reflect their current addresses, these voters risk becoming “self-disenfranchised.”

New Jersey: E-mail vote raises security concerns | USAToday

New Jersey residents displaced by last week’s superstorm can vote by e-mail like overseas residents – but with a crucial difference that has drawn objections from voting security experts. Like 30 other states, New Jersey allows overseas voters and military voters to return their ballots electronically via e-mail. But only New Jersey also requires voters to mail in a paper version. Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno announced Saturday that New Jersey residents could vote by e-mail under the state’s overseas voter law – but didn’t say they must send in paper backup.

Ohio: Law Could Bring Long Delays in a Recount | NYTimes.com

Election Day in Ohio is Tuesday, as in every other state in the union. But if the margin in the presidential contest is narrow here, as many polls predict, the winner may not be known until well into December. Ohio, like several of the other battleground states that are expected to determine the outcome of the election, has a labyrinthine recount procedure that ensures weeks of delay and the likelihood of a mountain of lawsuits. Election officials and election law experts are praying for a result here that Daniel P. Tokaji, a law professor at Ohio State University, described as “outside the margin of litigation.”

Ohio: Election Law Quirk Could Play Big Role if Vote Tally Sparks Court Fight | American Lawyer

As a key battleground in this year’s presidential election, Ohio has already seen its share of voting-related litigation. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit has already weighed in with several rulings on the counting of provisional ballots and on expanded early voting hours. But there is another important legal issue peculiar to Ohio that hasn’t gotten much attention so far, though it will be a significant factor should the state’s election tally spark litigation. Under a little-noticed provision of Ohio law, federal election results cannot be challenged in state court.

National: Legal arms race begins as both sides prepare to do battle in court | The Independent

Battalions of lawyers are readying for legal challenges in battleground states after Tuesday’s election, fearing a replay of the nightmare, razor-close 2000 contest in Florida between Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W Bush, who emerged victorious as President only after a Supreme Court decision. With the 2012 election again too close to call, the Democratic and Republican parties have dispatched legal advisers to polling stations across the country with a particular focus on the politically polarised states of Ohio (where Democrats are understood to have deployed more than 2,000 legal experts), Florida, Wisconsin and Virginia, whose votes could decide the election outcome.

Voting Blogs: New Dispute over Ohio’s Provisional Voting Procedures | ElectionLaw@Moritz

A late-breaking controversy has emerged over provisional voting in Ohio. It concerns the official form used to indicate whether or not the provisional voter has shown the poll worker a valid identification. The form contains a space for the provisional voter to write down the last four digits of the voter’s Social Security Number (SSN), if that is the form of ID the voter wishes to use. Alternatively, the voter may write down his or her Ohio driver’s license number (DLN), and the form provides a separate space for that. Beyond those two methods of identification, the form also contains several boxes the provisional voter may select depending upon which other type of identification the voter presents. There is a box for “military identification card”; one for current utility bill, bank statement, or other similarly acceptable document; and another for a government-issued photo ID. Finally, there is also a box for a voter who does not possess any of the permissible types of ID and who fills out a separate form swearing so.

Ohio: Lawyers descend on Ohio – just in case | cincinnati.com

Hamilton County Democratic Party chairman Tim Burke recently joked that the possibility that Ohio could keep the nation waiting for weeks to learn who won Tuesday’s presidential election was “really a plot to fill Ohio’s hotels with lawyers.” As with many jokes, this one has some basis in fact. Because as Election Day approaches, the first wave of lawyers already is swarming over Ohio to prepare for the possibility that the election may be decided not just at the polls, but in court. The most lawyer-intensive scenario, many agree, will surface if hundreds of thousands of absentee and provisional votes in Ohio remain, by law, uncounted until at least mid-November.

Ohio: Provisional Ballot Order: The Biggest Legal Story of the Weekend | The Atlantic

With just a few dozen hours left before polls open on Election Day, here is a candidate for the most important election-law story of the weekend — a story likely to cross over into the general political debate Sunday through Monday. This early copy from the Associated Press offered a hint:

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Voter advocates are criticizing an order by Ohio’s elections chief dealing with the casting of provisional ballots. Advocates are saying on Saturday that the order by Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted late Friday wrongly puts the burden of recording the form of ID used on a provisional ballot on voters, not pollworkers ….

National: Poll watchers could bring “chaos” in Ohio and elsewhere, national expert says | Dispatch Politics

Forget all that concern about provisional ballots, improperly denied absentee ballot applications and the like. What is really the biggest wild card for next week’s presidential election in Ohio and elsewhere? Citizen poll watchers. So says Doug Chapin of the University of Minnesota, a widely acclaimed expert in how elections are conducted. “I think the biggest thing to watch next Tuesday is the impact of citizen poll watchers, including but not limited to those affiliated with Houston-based True the Vote,” he said yesterday on his Election Academy blog.

National: Scant evidence of voter suppression, fraud in states with ID laws | chicagotribune.com

Democratic claims that a large number of Americans could be prevented from voting because of photo identification laws are probably overstated based on evidence from Georgia and Indiana, the two states where the laws have been in place for multiple elections, Reuters found. Data and numerous interviews by Reuters reporters also suggest there is little evidence to bolster Republican assertions that ID laws are needed to combat rampant voter fraud.

Voting Blogs: The Counting Rules for Overtime: Materiality | ElectionLaw@Moritz

Recently, in this space, Ned Foley, Steve Huefner, and Josh Douglas have offered some characteristically thoughtful comments on election overtime. Ned reminded us thatpatience is a virtue; we have a process to work through narrow margins of victory, and even in a world a-Twitter, we should let the process run its course without panic. Steve mentioned a model calendar for shaping that process, at least in the context of a Presidential dispute. And Josh discussed the fora provided by state law in which to work through the details. At the kind invitation of the Moritz team, I would like to add a fourth element to the discussion: neither the appropriate emotional disposition for a post-election process nor timing nor location, but the substantive standards to be deployed. I think it extremely unlikely that the Presidential race will head into overtime. But it is virtually certain that some race, somewhere in the country, will. And it is therefore important to be prepared.

Florida: Glitch in Florida’s Voter Registration System can Disenfranchise Absentee Voters | electionsmith

A couple weeks ago, when we were investigating for our academic research patterns in rejection rates of absentee and provisional ballots cast in the August 14, 2012 primary election, we discovered some anomalies in the Florida statewide voter file. Upon further investigation, and after following up with some county Supervisors of Elections, we believe that we have found a troubling anomaly in Florida’s Voter Registration System. This oversight that we stumbled upon has the potential to disenfranchise registered voters who mailed in absentee ballots from their counties of residence and then subsequently updated their voter registration addresses with new information to reflect having moved. By being vigilant and updating their voter registration information to reflect their current addresses, these voters risk becoming “self-disenfranchised.”

Virginia: Election Results Could Come Late Due to Virgina Voter ID Law | Newsplex

The new voter ID law in Virginia, which took effect earlier this summer, just doesn’t change how people vote — it also changes when the official results of the election will be released. “I don’t really know, since this is the first time really that the ID law has been into affect, what it’s going to do,” Charlottesville registrar Sheri Iachetta said. When Virginia’s voter ID law went into effect, it wiped out the affirmation of identity, the alternative for voters who didn’t have an ID with them. The signature would allow the person to vote.

Virginia: Fairfax Democrats sue over polling-place observers | The Washington Post