Provisional Ballots: HB63

Virginia House Bill #63 is long, and will probably never affect most of our lives. If you're wondering what a "provisional ballot" is, however, the proposed definition of a provisional ballot and rules for the use of one are online here:

http://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?121+ful+HB63

When is this verbiage useful? Well, it would have been useful to my family in an election that took place a few years ago. The story may edify or entertain some people, so here it is.

My mother, a home health aide, had stayed with a patient in Florida for several years. She had renewed her driver's license in Florida. When she came home, right away she was asked to stay with a patient in Tennessee. In order to keep the car properly tagged, she registered her car in Tennessee shortly before the election in November.

This was an especially interesting election. Although I was still living in Maryland and had voted by absentee ballot there in previous years, I bought a bus ticket and came home to vote that year. The polls were packed with voters, many of whom would normally have voted by absentee ballot if they'd bothered to vote at all, and TV crews. Mother and I walked in and were greeted by people who knew us personally...and there was Mother, with an out-of-state driver's license, an out-of-state vehicle, and an expired Virginia voter registration card, not on the printed election book.

Technically, the election judge said, she ought to have voted in Tennessee. "But I don't know anybody in Tennessee, and my husband's relatives are running in Virginia..." Mother protested.

The registrar was in her office, setting up for a TV interview that actually went on air while I was in line to vote. Because the registrar knew Mother personally and knew that she owned land in Virginia, she was allowed to pass judgment on Mother's eligibility to vote. Everyone was listening, so I could hear the speakerphone ten feet away: "She's an honorable woman who's lived here for a long time. Give her a ballot."

Everything was in order. I was with Mother all day and can swear that she never went near a polling place in Tennessee. But nobody was completely happy. To the out-of-state TV people it might have looked like cronyism.

That's why we need the concept of "provisional ballots." They may be a pain in the neck, and years may go by when nobody needs one, but they allow people who have a vote to cast one when travel or business have interfered with the usual paperwork. Additionally, if someone is trying to cheat--if, for example, Mother had voted in Tennessee--they allow election judges to disallow the vote, and state authorities to prosecute the cheater.