What is a provisional ballot, and how are provisional ballots counted?
Sometimes voters do not appear on registration rolls at polling places because of clerical error, because they are at the wrong polling place or because they are not registered to vote. Other voters may not have brought with them the required specific forms of ID (which vary widely by state) to the polls. Federal law requires poll workers to provide these people with provisional ballots. If election officials can confirm that they were correctly registered, their vote is counted. Each state has different rules for when a provisional ballot should be counted. However, the federal Election Assistance Commission has found states are not uniformly implementing provisional ballots (PDF), and in some states, most provisional ballots are not counted.
