Editing Provisional ballot (section)

==History==
The right of [[political parties]] to have observers at [[polling place]]s is long-standing.<ref>Title XIV, Chapter 5, Sec. 4922, [https://archive.org/details/electionlawsofst00ohiorich The Election Laws of the State of Ohio], Ohio Secretary of State, 1920.</ref>  One of the established roles for such observers is to act as challengers, in the event that someone attempts to vote at the polling place who is not eligible to vote.<ref>[http://www.sos.state.mn.us/docs/challenger_faq_2008.pdf Election Day "Challengers"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081106224959/http://www.sos.state.mn.us/docs/challenger_faq_2008.pdf |date=2008-11-06 }}, [http://www.sos.state.mn.us/ Minnesota Secretary of State], June 2008.</ref>

Before the implementation of provisional ballots, some state laws allowed a voter whose eligibility was challenged to cast a ''challenged ballot''.<ref name="NCSL" /> After the polls closed, the canvassing board was then charged with examining the challenged ballots and determining whether the challenge was to be upheld or not.

The Help America Vote Act brings a degree of uniformity to the array of various challenged ballot rules enacted by various states. For example, each state must provide a means for the voter to find out whether his or her ballot was counted, though the states may use different ways of doing so (such as a website or a phone number).<ref name="NCSL" />

Though the Act mandates the use of provisional ballots nationwide, it exempted the six states that had been exempted from the [[National Voter Registration Act of 1993]] because those states had and continue to have either "same-day" [[Voter registration in the United States|voter registration]] or no registration requirement at all: [[Idaho]], [[Minnesota]], [[New Hampshire]], [[North Dakota]], [[Wisconsin]], and [[Wyoming]].<ref name="NCSL" /><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.justice.gov/crt/national-voter-registration-act-1993-nvra|title=The National Voter Registration Act Of 1993 (NVRA) {{!}} CRT {{!}} Department of Justice|website=www.justice.gov|date=6 August 2015 |language=en|access-date=2018-06-26}}</ref> However, those states may choose to use provisional ballots. {{As of|2015}}, North Dakota, Wisconsin, and Wyoming used them for some purposes, while the other three did not have provisional ballots at all.<ref name="NCSL" />