Provisional ballots join list of Florida's voting concerns
Almost half of the provisional ballots cast in primaries were thrown out, leading to a push to make them count.
By DAVID KARP, St. Petersburg Times Published October 7, 2004

Tanya Julian barely had time to vote when poll workers told her she was at the wrong precinct.

With only a few minutes to get to her proper precinct, poll workers gave her a provisional ballot, which the Florida Legislature created after the 2000 recount to make sure every vote counts.

Julian would have done better to race to her precinct in Clearwater: Her vote didn't count.

Pinellas elections officials rejected her ballot, along with about half of the provisional ballots cast in the Aug. 31 primaries.

Across Florida, two of every five provisional ballots cast in the primaries were thrown out, a survey by the St. Petersburg Times found.

Canvassing boards rejected 41 percent of the approximately 2,000 provisional ballots cast in the primaries.

The 851 rejected ballots make up a tiny fraction of the total vote, normally not enough to change the outcome of an election. But that could have changed the course of the presidency in 2000, when President Bush won by 537 votes.

Labor unions with Democratic ties have gone to court to make sure more provisional ballots count. They say the votes could change Florida's election if the presidential race is as tight as it was in 2000.

"In a state where it is close, it could be that the counting of the provisional ballots is where the decision is made," said Kay Maxwell, national president of the League of Women Voters.

The AFL-CIO and other labor unions say a state law requiring provisional ballots in a voter's assigned precinct is unconstitutional. The Florida Constitution requires only that voters cast ballots in their home county, lawyers say.

The Florida Supreme Court will hear arguments next week and may rule before the Nov. 2 election.

Ron Labasky, a lawyer who represents the Florida State Association of Supervisors of Elections, predicted widespread turmoil if the high court ordered counties to count all provisional ballots.

The ballots were designed to eliminate problems from 2000, when voters were turned away from the polls when workers mistakenly thought they weren't registered to vote or were felons prohibited from voting.

The Times survey found that the highest number of rejected provisional ballots were in Duval, Miami-Dade and Broward counties, the same counties that figured prominently in the 2000 recount.

Hillsborough and Pinellas threw out more than half of their provisional ballots. Orange County rejected 80 percent.

The reasons varied: Scores of people were not registered to vote after all. Others had voted in the wrong precinct. A few were felons and ineligible to vote.

In Sarasota County, where about 60,000 voters went to the polls, only five voted by provisional ballot. Voters in Pasco cast eight provisional ballots. Hernando County had two, and Citrus County had five.

Many counties have responded to the problems of 2000 with technology: laptop computers in precincts to check the master voter roll and phone banks to redirect voters to the right precinct.

That's why so few provisional ballots were used in the Aug. 31 primaries in most counties, supervisors said. More than half of Florida's counties saw fewer than 10 provisional ballots.

Each county has a canvassing board that reviews ballots, and each operates a little differently.

The Pinellas canvassing board threw out ballots cast by four voters who went to the wrong place. But they counted ballots from three voters who were in the wrong precinct but had gone to the right building. (The building had more than one precinct.)

In Pasco, a poll worker made the same mistake. Supervisor of Elections Kurt Browning told canvassing board members the law required them to discard the ballot. The board counted the ballot anyway.

"Most canvassing boards look for a way to validate a vote," said Pinellas County Judge Patrick Caddell, a member of the canvassing board. "The goal is to count as many as you can."

Even so, Pinellas' board rejected ballots from three qualified voters who went to the right precincts but insisted on voting by provisional ballots. They said they didn't trust the electronic touch screen machines. The canvassing board tossed the votes.

The disparity opens the door for the kind of county-by-county fights seen in the 2000 recount.

"There have not been statewide standards for how the counting is going to be done," said Maxwell of the League of Women Voters. "It's important that everyone know how it's done, and it be done the same way."