Provisional voting toolkit

www.civicdesign.org/tools/provisional/

Provisional voting toolkit

Provisional voting is an important safeguard to ensure that every eligible voter has their vote counted. If a voter’s name does not appear in the voter rolls, or the voter is missing a required document, or some other question comes up when a voter shows up to vote in person, most states allow poll workers to offer the voter a provisional ballot instead of a regular ballot. This gives election offices time to investigate and resolve the issue during the certification period.

This toolkit aims to help election offices make the provisional process easier to understand and execute consistently, including:

  • preparing and training poll workers
  • supporting voters at the polling place
  • completing the work that happens after Election Day

How to use this toolkit

Provisional voting, also known as “affidavit” or “challenge” voting, looks different across the US. While not all materials in this toolkit may be relevant to your jurisdiction, we hope you will find resources or components that are useful to your office’s unique needs.

Before using each tool, review and adapt the content, terms, and workflow to match your jurisdiction’s unique election processes.

Cover page of a what if guide. It has a prominent title and a table of contents on the right side.

What if guide template

Canva template to design a job aid for poll workers.

Get the what if guide template

What is provisional voting? Provisional voting is a protection. So no eligible voter is turned away. Two election workers catch falling ballots in a net.

Social media posts about provisional voting

Customizable social media messaging for election officials to share clear, calm, and accurate information when it matters most.

See posts on When Something Happens

Coming soon:

  • Provisional form checklist job aid
  • Take home notice template

Tell us what you think

We’re building this toolkit in the open and want your input. Have feedback on the templates? A use case we’re missing? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at hello@civicdesign.org

Research behind this guide

This toolkit is based on our work designing provisional voting forms and related materials in several states.

Read some of our learnings about provisional ballots in this article.

This research is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 International License. You are free to share and adapt for non-commercial purposes. If you share, cite the Center for Civic Design as the source. If you have questions about applying this work, contact director@civicdesign.org