Virginia voters who missed the Oct. 15 registration deadline can still use a relatively recent option known as same-day registration. They will be given a provisional ballot to vote, but there are more steps to the process that voters should know about.
Keith Bell likes to vote early at the City of Richmond Office of Elections. The last several elections, Bell filled out a ballot with no issues.
That was not his experience this year. Bell arrived ready to vote, but was told his voter registration had been canceled and that he was listed as a “failure to respond.”
An election official said Bell had requested an absentee ballot, but Bell said he never requested one. The absentee ballot request was to an address Bell has not used for seven years, he said.
After Bell made it clear he had not tried to vote by any other method, the election officials registered him on the spot, and Bell was able to cast his vote.
“They re-registered me, and I voted,” Bell said. “It took about an hour, and it was painless, but they just kept telling me that I ordered an absentee ballot from an address that I don’t live at.”
Because Bell went to vote in September, prior to the Oct. 15 registration deadline, he could register and cast a regular ballot the same day.
Voters can still register after that Oct. 15 deadline thanks to a bill passed in 2020, which took effect in 2022. The process is referred to as same-day registration. Voters who use SDR submit provisional ballots, which give electoral boards a chance to review voters’ eligibility.
What is a provisional ballot?
The Help America Vote Act introduced provisional ballots in 2002. Congress passed the law to reform the election process following the controversial 2000 election between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore, according to the Election Assistance Commission. The act mandated all states provide provisional ballot options for potentially ineligible voters as a “fail-safe.”
Other HAVA reforms included strict standards for voting machines, multilingual ballot offerings and easy-to-understand education material for voters.
An election official will offer a provisional ballot if…
- a voter’s eligibility cannot be readily verified
- their identity is in question
- they lack proper ID
- an absentee ballot was requested on behalf of the voter but they report not requesting or casting it
- the voter’s address or name do not match their registration information, according to federal law.
Rich Meagher, host of the VPM podcast RVA’s Got Issues and a professor at Randolph-Macon College, says provisional ballots help ensure people still have a voice.
This method of voting can be especially important in college towns. Most of the provisional ballots cast in 2023 in Williamsburg were from William & Mary students who same-day registered, according to a city spokesperson. Meagher believes this to be one of the most important functions of provisional ballots.
“It’s a transient population in a lot of ways at colleges,” Meagher said. “A lot of students do vote at their college address, and they’re only temporarily living there.”
How do provisional ballots work?
A provisional voter will fill out their information on a green envelope before they are given a ballot. Voters utilizing SDR fill out the front of the envelope, while voters with other situations fill out the back.
The envelope requests the voter provide identifying information, with a warning that knowingly false statements are punishable as fraud, according to state law.
“The front of this green envelope is a voter registration application,” said Samantha Shepherd, communications manager at the Loudoun County Office of Elections. “They fill that out, they vote their ballot, and then they stick their ballot inside of the green envelope.”
All of the provisional envelopes are placed in another envelope with a list of all voters who cast their ballots this way.
Starting the day after Election Day, local electoral staff meet to review provisional ballots and determine each voter’s eligibility, according to the state elections department’s (ELECT) handbook.
The location and time of the electoral board meeting is provided to provisional voters when they cast their ballots. This gives the voter time to provide evidence of their registration or request an extension.
Local electoral boards must determine the voter’s eligibility before the provisional envelope is opened; the ballot is only counted if the voter is determined eligible. Otherwise, the voter’s selections are kept secret and the ballot is discarded. A voter is notified by mail if their ballot is discarded, according to Shepherd.
How provisional ballots impact election officials
Some rural counties in Virginia counted fewer than 10 provisional ballots in 2023. Counties like Fairfax and Loudoun counted over 1,000, according to ELECT. Some localities expect to see a high volume of provisional ballots because of this year’s presidential race.
“For this election that other envelope is actually a box, because we’re expecting to have so many same-day voter registration provisional envelopes,” Shepherd said.
Loudoun County has already received over 600 provisional votes as of Oct. 31, according to Shepherd.
“It is all hands on deck the day after the election for processing provisional ballots,” Shepherd said.
Loudoun’s elections office has 17 permanent staff. The county added another 17 temporary hires for the election. According to Shepherd, at least 12 staffers will work solely on provisional ballots after Nov. 5 in order to meet the state’s vote certification deadline on Nov. 15.
General registrars ranked SDR as their biggest challenge in 2022, according to ELECT.
The state agency brought together several general registrars to improve the process in early 2023, according to an annual report. This group noted areas within the process that required clearer guidance and removed a redundant step to speed up the process.
Capital News Service is a program of Virginia Commonwealth University’s Robertson School of Media and Culture. Students in the program provide state government coverage for a variety of media outlets in Virginia.
