If your ballot is damaged, marked incorrectly, lost, or never arrived, you can request a replacement ballot. In person, hand the bad ballot to a poll worker before you cast it and ask for a new one. By mail, contact your local election office, sign a replacement request or spoiled-ballot affidavit, and a new ballot will be issued while the original is deactivated.
Requesting a Replacement at the Polling Place
If you’re voting in person on a paper ballot and notice a mistake, tell a poll worker before you feed the ballot into the scanner or drop it in the box. The worker marks your ballot as spoiled, secures it in a separate envelope so it can never be counted, and hands you a fresh one. You go back to the booth and start over.
Most jurisdictions let you do this more than once in a single visit. A common pattern is three total attempts, meaning one original and two replacements, but some states cap it at two and others set no fixed number. The “three attempts” rule you may have heard is not universal. If you exhaust the limit without producing a valid ballot, you may lose your chance to vote in that election, so take your time before marking.
Touchscreens and Ballot-Marking Devices
If your polling place uses a touchscreen or a ballot-marking device, corrections work differently. These machines show a review screen summarizing your selections before you cast, and you can change any contest as many times as you need. The Help America Vote Act requires every voting system to let you verify your choices and fix them before final casting.
On a device that prints a paper ballot, check the printout carefully against what you intended. If it’s wrong, flag a poll worker right away. The printed ballot can be spoiled and the machine restarted for a new attempt. Once that printed ballot goes into the scanner, though, it’s cast.
Requesting a Replacement Mail-In or Absentee Ballot
For mail-in and absentee voters, replacement is slower but still available. If you marked the ballot wrong, spilled something on it, lost it, or never received it, contact your local election office and ask for a replacement. You’ll typically fill out a spoiled-ballot affidavit or replacement request form stating that the original was damaged, lost, or destroyed. Most jurisdictions require that statement to be made under penalty of perjury.
Some jurisdictions require you to return the spoiled ballot along with your request if you still have it. Once the office processes your affidavit and confirms your identity against the registration records, a new ballot package is sent to your address. The replacement envelope carries a unique barcode tied to the new request, and the original ballot’s tracking number is deactivated so it can’t be processed if it later turns up.
Tracking the Replacement
Many states offer online ballot tracking that shows whether your original was voided and whether the replacement has been mailed, received, or counted. Some states push automated text or email updates at each stage; others show only receipt. If your state doesn’t offer online tracking, your local election office can confirm status by phone, and the nonpartisan Election Protection hotline at 866-OUR-VOTE (866-687-8683) can also help.
What the Election Office Will Ask For
Whether you request the replacement at the polls or by mail, officials need to confirm you’re registered and that you are who you say you are. Have ready your full legal name as it appears on the voter rolls, your residential address, and your date of birth. Some jurisdictions also ask for a voter ID number or the last four digits of your Social Security number.
For mail-in replacements, that information goes on the request form, and your signature on the form is matched against the signature in your registration file. Small mismatches matter. A name written differently from the rolls, or a signature that has drifted over the years, can delay processing or trigger a signature cure notice.
Deadlines and How Many Replacements You Can Get
Timing is the tightest constraint. At the polls, you can generally spoil a ballot and get a new one right up to closing time. For mail-in replacement, the request has to reach your election office with enough time left for a new ballot to be printed, mailed, filled out, and returned before the deadline. Plan on at least a week for processing and transit. Requests made in the last few days before Election Day often don’t pay off, and if the cutoff has already passed your realistic option is to vote in person instead.
Replacement caps at the polling place vary by state as noted above. For mail-in voting, logistics usually limit you to one replacement cycle regardless of what the legal maximum happens to be.
Military and Overseas Voters
If you’re serving in the military or living abroad, distance makes a normal replacement cycle nearly impossible, and federal law builds in two protections.
Every state must send absentee ballots to eligible military and overseas voters at least 45 days before a federal election when the request arrives in time. That head start absorbs some postal delay.
The Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot is the built-in backup. If your regular state ballot never arrives or arrives too damaged to use and can’t be replaced in time, you can fill out the FWAB and submit it as a substitute. Your local election office counts the FWAB unless your regular state ballot also arrives by the deadline, in which case the state ballot takes priority. If your regular ballot arrives after you’ve sent the FWAB, make every reasonable effort to notify your local office and return the state ballot instead.
Some jurisdictions let military and overseas voters receive and return ballots electronically, which turns a weeks-long replacement cycle into hours. The Federal Voting Assistance Program at fvap.gov lists which options your state supports.
If You Can’t Get a Regular Replacement: Provisional Ballots
Sometimes the standard process is blocked. The most common example: you were sent a mail-in ballot, decided to vote in person, and didn’t bring the mail ballot with you to surrender. In most states, the poll worker can’t hand you a regular ballot because the rolls still show an outstanding mail ballot in your name. You’ll be given a provisional ballot instead, which is set aside and counted only after officials confirm the mail-in ballot was never received or processed.
Federal law sets a baseline: you must be offered a provisional ballot in any federal election when your name doesn’t appear on the eligible voter list at your polling place, and when a court order has extended polling hours. Many states offer provisional ballots in additional situations, including the surrendered-mail-ballot scenario.
Under the Help America Vote Act, if a poll worker tells you that you can’t vote, they must notify you of your right to cast a provisional ballot and let you do so after you sign a written affirmation that you’re registered and eligible. Every jurisdiction must also provide a free way, usually a phone number or website, for you to check whether your provisional ballot was counted and, if it wasn’t, the reason.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 52 USC 21082 – Provisional Voting and Voting Information Requirements Being turned away without any ballot at all is a violation of federal law.
Is Requesting a Replacement Ballot Legal?
Yes. Voting more than once in a federal election is a crime carrying a fine of up to $10,000, imprisonment for up to five years, or both, but the federal statute specifically carves out the normal replacement process: casting an additional ballot is not “voting more than once” when all prior ballots from that voter have been properly invalidated.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 52 USC 10307 – Prohibited Acts Following the standard procedure, poll worker spoils the old ballot or the election office deactivates its barcode, is exactly what the law contemplates.
What isn’t legal is trying to keep a live ballot in play while also casting a replacement, or lying on a replacement affidavit. Because those forms are signed under penalty of perjury, false statements about a ballot being lost or damaged expose you to state perjury and election fraud charges, which in many states are felonies with their own prison sentences and fines.