With preliminary ranked choice results showing Mark Farrell ahead by a slim margin in D2 and Malia Cohen leading narrowly in D10, provisional ballots could prove to be of pivotal importance in these two races.
Or as Sharen Hewitt, executive director of the D10-based C.L.A.E.R. project, put it, “Never before has the weight of the provisional ballot counted so much.”
As Hewitt points out, folks who are in hospital, jail or serving in the U.S. military are voted most likely to be casting provisional or absentee ballots. And their votes need to be counted, just like anyone else’s. So, let’s keep asking how many provisional and absentee votes were cast and in which districts, before officially declaring who won the 2010 election.