Reply #4: Not necessarily.... [View All]

[claudiajean]

...don't forget provisional ballots, and that people don't always vote where they are registered. And that they sometimes try to vote when they are not registered at all. But all of these voters should receive a provisional ballot.

In counties where there is a large city as the center of the population, and significant suburbs of that city, it is not unrealistic to expect that some of the precincts in the city are going to have "200%" turnout if they are loacted in an area where many people may be casting out of precinct provisional ballots.

(Provisional ballots use the same ballot blank -- but rather than going directly into the ballot box, the ballot is placed in a special envelope and processed for eligibility prior to tabulation, much as an absentee ballot is. So the extra ballots needed for the provisionals must be added to the amounts needed for the regular poll voters expected.)

It is extremely difficult for election officials to predict ahead of time where these areas may be, so the prudent election official orders 200% poll ballots in urban areas of a county with a major city. It is far better to have too many ballots than too few.

156% is far too low for the City of Milwaukee.