Counties vary in handling of provisional ballots across Alabama

Counties vary in handling of provisional ballots across Alabama

By JAY REEVES
Associated Press Writer
November 10, 2004

One thing was apparent Wednesday from Alabama's first statewide experiment with provisional ballots in a general election: Counties seemed to handle the votes in a variety of different ways.

In the largest counties, like Jefferson, hundreds of provisional ballots were rejected after people were allowed to cast them outside their normal district. That didn't happen in less populous counties like Cherokee, where fewer people and a small-town touch meant relatively few questions.
And then there was Lamar County, where officials said no provisional ballots were cast at all - possibly because voters believed they wouldn't be legal and counted anyway.

The statewide result: Thousands of people who voted a provisional ballot didn't get a say in the election. An Associated Press survey of 59 of Alabama's 67 counties showed officials accepting only 1,836 of 6,560 provisional votes, or about 28 percent.

The secretary of state's office held nine regional training meetings for election officials before last Tuesday's vote, which marked the first time provisional ballots were used in a statewide general election. A spokesman for the office, Trey Granger, said "local twists" may account for county-to-county differences in provisional balloting.
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