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Less Than Half of the Provisional Ballots Cast Were Counted

November 30, 2004
By: David Ferrucci
State Capital Bureau

JEFFERSON CITY - Governor-elect Matt Blunt, serving as the secretary of state, will certify the Nov. 2 general election results on Wednesday.

Among the certified votes there will be more than 3,000 provisional ballots. However that's less than half of the more than 8,000 provisional ballots cast.

Gayla Vandelicht, co-director in the secretary of state's office said they don't know the actual reasons why the ballots were cast or why some weren't counted.

"The most obvious reason is that they were not registered voters," Vandelicht said.

Provisional voting is a federal requirement designed to assure that a registered voter is not blocked from voting simply because a person's name does not appear on the registered voting list at the polling place.

If the voter's name is not on the list, the voter can cast a provisional ballot.

The ballot is then later investigated to determine if the voter is registered. If the voter is registered the ballot is counted.

Unregistered Missouri voters ended up casting around 5,000 provisional ballots.

"I think that in most cases people thought they were registered and weren't," Vandelicht said.

There are a number of reasons that could happen, Vandelicht said. People could have been registered in a different jurisdiction or have failed to change their registration form if they moved from one county to another. People sometimes don't know they have to reregister when they move into a different election authority's jurisdiction.

"It's just like changing your address on your drivers license or something," Vandelicht said. "You have to go in and reregister and a lot of people don't realize you have to do that."

"We don't have statewide registration," Vandelicht said.

For the more than 3,000 voters who had their provisional ballots counted, it was discovered that their name should have been on the election register, Vandelicht said.

Overall the election, including provisional voting, was a success, Vandelicht said.

"Provisional voting went off without a flaw," Vandelicht said.