New Federal Law needed to avoid ths - Provisional Ballots 04 and 06

Provisional ballots were created by Congress in 1993 to ensure that voters would never be turned away without casting a ballot when they showed up at the polls.

(http://www.nytimes.com)

In the 2006 election, the first under Ohio’s new voter identification law, about 10,600 of the 128,000 provisional ballots cast were rejected because they were cast in the wrong precinct, even though state law requires poll workers to direct voters to their correct precinct before issuing a provisional ballot.

In 2004, some precincts in Franklin County, which includes Columbus, had lines with four-hour waits. The county also had one of the state’s highest rates of provisional-ballot use, as overwhelmed poll workers tried to use them to ease the lines.