Review: 20% of provisional ballots uncounted

The review looked at ballots cast in Ohio’s March primary.

CLEVELAND (AP) — Roughly 20 percent of provisional ballots cast in the March primary election in Ohio were rejected by election officials, a newspaper review found.

Many voters who cast provisional ballots lost their votes because of avoidable poll worker errors, including a failure to direct voters to the proper precinct and not instructing voters how to properly fill out the ballots, The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer found in a review of election records reported Sunday.

A high rate of foreclosures, a huge expected turnout, and hundreds of thousands of newly registered voters have many predicting that a large number of provisional ballots will be cast in the Nov. 4 election. The total number of provisional ballots used in the state has been roughly between 3 percent and 4 percent of all ballots cast, a potentially influential amount in a large state that can swing the election with a few thousand votes.

The largest number of provisional ballots are cast in the areas with the highest minority populations.

The review found that Lorain County in Northeast Ohio rejected 38 percent of the provisional ballots, the highest in the region. Summit and Portage counties followed at 24 percent, and Cuyahoga County was at 22 percent.

Provisional ballots are given to voters whose names don’t appear on the voter lists kept at polling places. They are later counted if officials are able to verify exact matches for names and addresses.

In the March primary election, William Wingo went to the Cuyahoga County precinct where he thought he was required to vote. It was Wingo’s first time voting since moving into a new neighborhood two years before.

Instead of calling the Board of Elections to find out the proper precinct for Wingo, a poll worker asked him to fill out a provisional ballot. His vote never counted because he was at the wrong precinct. A few weeks after the primary, Wingo received a card in the mail informing him of his proper precinct, he said.

“There was no talking to anybody or telling me where to go,” Wingo said.

More than 40 percent of Cuyahoga’s rejected ballots were thrown out because election officials couldn’t confirm a voter’s registration, sometimes because the provisional ballot envelope wasn’t filled out correctly, said Betty Grant Edwards, registration manager for the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections.

The two most common reasons for provisional ballots being rejected in the primary were voters not casting a ballot in the right precinct, and voters not being registered, the review of records showed.

For the November election, Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner has issued a directive requiring poll workers to tell voters the right precinct if they are in the wrong location.

Northeast Ohio counties say they are taking steps to try to keep provisional ballots from being cast when they shouldn’t be.

Jose Candelario, director of the Lorain County Board of Elections, said the office will stay open until 9 p.m. Monday — the last day of registration — so that voters can register or update their information. He said there will be an increased effort on Election Day to make sure voters are directed to the proper precincts.

In Cuyahoga, poll worker manager Shantiel Soeder said the county has improved poll worker training and highlighted the ballot envelope items that must be filled out. There’s also step-by-step instructions to handle provisional ballot scenarios.

“It is pretty much like a do-it-yourself guide,” Soeder said.

Voting rights advocates are pushing for a change to Ohio law to get rid of the requirement that voters have to be in a specific precinct.

But until then, they are working to educate voters and poll workers so that the number of provisional ballots cast is at a minimum.

“People should not vote a provisional ballot unless they are absolutely sure there is no other choice,” said Jocelyn Travis, director of the nonpartisan Ohio Votes. “Their vote may not be counted.