21 Provisionals? Cures? Explaining the statutes of remaining ballots

Hundreds of thousands of ballots have been counted in Nevada’s midterm elections. But there are still a handful out there left to be tabulated nearly a week after the election, the vast majority of which are mail ballots in which the signatures need to be “cured,” along with several thousand provisional ballots.

So what exactly are those ballots?

Cures

Voters are required to sign the outside envelope into which they place their mail-in ballot in order for it to be counted. It’s similar to a voter who shows up to a polling place to vote in person, and is asked to sign a tablet computer. In both cases, election officials verify that the signature matches the one that’s on file in the county elections office.

If there is no signature on the mail ballot envelope, or the signature does not match what’s on file, local election officials then begin what’s known as the “cure,” process by notifying the voter that there is an issue that needs to be fixed before their vote can be counted. Once those voters sign an affidavit that says they are eligible to vote and that they only cast a single ballot, then those ballots can then be counted.

As of Saturday, Clark County had identified a total of roughly 14,650 ballots that were needed a signature cure. Of those, just over 7,100 of those were still in the cure process, Clark County Registrar of Voters Joe Gloria said Saturday.

Those ballots needed to be cured by 5 p.m. Monday under state law.

Provisionals

Nevada now has same-day voter registration, which lets Nevadans register to vote at the same time as they cast their ballot in person. But those ballots are cast as “provisional” ballots in order to allow local election officials to verify if that person is eligible to vote and to make sure that voter did not cast a ballot anywhere else in the state.

Clark County had 5,555 provisional ballots during the general election, Gloria said. Because of the need to ensure those voters haven’t voted anywhere else, Gloria said those provisional ballots cannot be counted until Wednesday, when the secretary of state provides counties with a master list of voters who cast ballots all across Nevada. Once a provisional voter has been verified, her or his ballot will be counted.

Ballot tracking

Some people on social media have reported that either the secretary of state’s website or a third-party ballot-tracking app shows “mail ballot received,” but not yet counted. Or they see a message saying “your ballot envelope for the 2022 General Election has been accepted and your ballot is being processed for counting.”

According to the county, ballots have been counted, but those sites have not been updated. They will likely post current information after county commissioners on Friday canvass the general election results. By Monday, voters should be able to see that their ballots were counted using either the county’s voter information database (enter your personal information and check “voter history”), the secretary of state’s website or the BallotTrax app.

Contact Colton Lochhead at clochhead@reviewjournal.com. Follow @ColtonLochhead on Twitter.