Dumb question, what exactly is a provisional ballot?
It’s a ballot for people whose eligibility is in question.
In TX, a Provisional Ballot is something given to a voter who doesn’t have proper ID, or official Voter’s Registration form, etc.
In 2016, in counties outside of Houston, van loads of voters showed up at polling places, without proper ID, registration, etc...and were given Provisional Ballots.
ILLary won several of these counties....one that had NOT been Dim, in decades. Hmmmm.
Provisional ballots are ones that they couldn’t confirm as being legit and to be reviewed later. In case of Broward where everything is allowed they’re basically fake and used as insurance votes.
A provisional ballot is when you walk into the polling place and your name is NOT on the listing. So you state it was on the listing, or that you moved in recent days/weeks/months. You demand to vote. So they whip out a provisional ballot and list why this should be accepted. All of these cast, will be reviewed prior to being counted.
In theory, some clerk will review your name and situation and determine your valid nature. But if you just came up with forty such votes...at one polling site, it could take an entire month for you to determine the situation for all forty folks. By that point, the deadline would have passed. My guess is that they have a dozen clerks at the county office hired just to read through the provisional reasons and pass the majority as valid.
Back twenty to thirty years ago, I don’t think provisional ballots existed.
It depends. In common parlance it means a ballot from a person about whom there are questions regarding their eligibility to vote. The ballot is held as provisional until it is verified to the satisfaction of the election officials that the person is indeed allowed to vote.
In Broward county parlance (and in the parlance of Democrats in general), a provisional ballot is an illegal ballot that has all Democrats selected, and which will be held until it is clear how many extra votes have to be manufactured for the Democrats to win.
All of this novel voting (early voting, mail-in voting, remote electronic voting, on-site electronic voting with no receipt, same-day registration, voting at college, and especially provisional ballots) is just a complicated scheme to fix or to steal elections.
And at the root is the false belief that we are a democracy, and that therefore complex systems to “count every vote” needed to be created.
Way, way too many unqualified people are voting. A minimalist qualification to be an elector (IOW, to vote) is to show up at a specified date and time in a location particular to your legal residence or domicile with proper identification to cast your ballot.
Maybe with a proper excuse, you should be able to cast an absentee ballot which would have to ARRIVE and be time-stamped (not be postmarked) before the polls close at your designated polling location, so that it could be counted with the legal votes cast on that day.
If you can’t do that - you shouldn’t be an elector.