Three hundred fifty-six people who voted provisionally in Union County on Nov. 3 will not have those ballots counted. The county elections board turned them down on Tuesday, Nov. 10. Most of those voters were not registered, had registered after the deadline or had moved within the state without registering again, elections staff told the board. Staff said each rejected voter's provisional application will be handled as a voter registration application, checked like any other.
A provisional ballot is the one a voter gets when poll workers can't confirm on the spot that the person is eligible, for example because the voter is at the wrong precinct or isn't on the rolls. It stays sealed in its envelope while staff research the voter, and staff said a rejected ballot is never opened.
The county had 803 provisional ballots. The board counted 446: 425 in full and 21 in part, counting only the races those voters were eligible for. It held one for a hearing on a challenge already filed.
What the added ballots changed
The added ballots did not change the result in Firethorne's school board district or on the jail bond. In school board District 6, Republican Brandi Smith leads Democrat Evan Metaxatos 9,822 to 9,058 in the state's results file updated Friday evening, Nov. 13. The $200 million jail bond, which voters turned down, failed 59,214 to 33,657.
They did move one race out of recount range. For the third of three seats on the Monroe City Council, Michelle Ball led Heidi Petterson by 87 votes in the state's unofficial count the morning after the election. The provisional ballots added 31 votes for Ball and 27 for Petterson. In the Friday file, Ball leads 4,442 to 4,351, a gap of 91.
In a race for several seats, state law lets a trailing candidate demand a recount when the gap is no more than 1% of the votes cast for the two candidates. On the morning-after count, 1% of the two candidates' 8,735 votes was 87.35, so the 87-vote gap was inside the line. Now 1% of their 8,793 votes is 87.93, and a gap of 91 is outside it. Elections staff did the math at the table on Nov. 10 and said the race was not eligible for a recount.
Inactive voters and challenged ballots
Of the 803 provisional ballots, 162 came from voters whose registration records lacked a driver's license or Social Security number. Those voters had been marked inactive, so they had to vote provisionally. The board approved 159 in full. The other three did not supply the number. Staff said federal law requires their votes in federal races to count even without it, so those three ballots counted in the federal races only.
The board also voted to challenge the ballots of four voters whom records show as dead, two who voted by mail and two who voted early. Staff had death certificates for three. The fourth turned up only in a new state match against Social Security records. The state told staff to challenge that ballot anyway and let the voter answer at the canvass hearing if the match is wrong.
Two other voters, staff said, a husband and wife, had both a mail ballot and an Election Day ballot on record. Their mail ballots reached the office after the board's last review meeting, so it looked as though the ballots had not been received, and the two voted in person. The board voted to challenge the mail ballots. Staff said the mail ballots can be pulled back so that the Election Day votes count.
Staff said one person usually researches each provisional ballot unless a question comes up, and that state audits flag approvals of ineligible voters, such as people still serving felony sentences or duplicate registrations. Staff said the deadline to finish was five business days after the election.