Making provisional voting easier in Virginia

If there’s a question about a person’s eligibility when they come into the polling place, they can vote on a provisional ballot. That’s what the Help America Vote Act says. Many states use provisional ballots as a way to make sure that anyone who wants to vote gets to.

The idea is that a voter fills out a form (it updates their voter registration), gets a ballot, puts the marked ballot in an envelope, and then a couple days later, the local board of elections reviews the voter’s eligibility and determines whether the ballot gets counted.

Most of the provisional ballot application forms we’ve seen until recently are overwhelming and contract-looking. The insight that the Virginia Department of Elections (ELECT) had was that the form doesn’t stand alone. The form is a piece of of a suite of materials that need to work together: form, envelope, notice to the voter about what happened and what to do next, and a log for poll workers to document who got a provisional ballot and why.

They wanted to

  • clarify which parts were for the voter and which parts were for the poll worker
  • help voters take any follow-up steps
  • simplify the work of poll workers
  • make sure everything is ready for the board of elections to make the best-informed determinations about which ballots get counted

 

After: The new envelope has all of the voter information on one side. It's oriented vertically.
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Virginia provisional ballot envelope printed on the flap side
After: On the back of the new envelope are steps for election officials. It's oriented horizontally.
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Virginia provisional ballot envelope
Before: Virginia prints the application form onto its envelope. The original is hard to read, and it's hard to know who is supposed to do what.
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After: Notices for voters in plain, actionable language.
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Before: This isn't a contract. It's a notice for voters about why they had to vote a provisional ballot.
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After: After a redesign and a couple rounds of usability testing, the form now gets returned to the central election office error-free.
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Before: The log for poll workers to document who got a provisional ballot often showed up at the election office incomplete or inaccurate.
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All of the pieces work together because they incorporate the best practices of

  • addressing one user at a time
  • writing headings that are action-oriented and in plain language
  • separating procedures into numbered steps

When ELECT presented the new materials at annual training in June 2018, registrars and electoral board members were understandably impressed.

The State Board of Elections, in unanimous approval, adopted the new provisional ballot form and notices on June 25, 2018. They will be ready to use in the 2018 midterm elections.

 

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