Daily Brew: November 14, 2025
Welcome to the Friday, Nov. 14, Brew.
By: Briana Ryan
Here’s what’s in store for you as you start your day:
- A look at the recall elections against 13 elected officials that happened on Nov. 4
- Sowing the digital seeds of local elections, by Leslie Graves, Ballotpedia Founder and CEO
- Here’s how provisional voting works in each state
A look at the recall elections against 13 elected officials that happened on Nov. 4
On Nov. 4, there were recall elections against 13 elected officials in six states. Among the 13 elected officials were seven city council members, two school board members, two county officials, one county commissioner, and one mayor.
While results are still pending for four of those elected officials, the rest were successfully recalled. Here’s a look at some noteworthy recall elections from Election Day.
Mesa, Arizona, voters successfully recalled District 2 City Councilmember Julie Spilsbury. Dorean Taylor defeated Spilsbury 53% to 47%. The recall effort began on Jan. 30, when Mesa resident JoAnne Robbins filed a recall petition. The grounds given in the petition for the recall include Spilsbury's votes in favor of changing a hotel into the site of Mesa's “Off the Streets” transitional housing program, increasing city council salaries, and increasing utility rates.
Fort Myers Beach, Florida, voters successfully recalled Councilmembers John King and Karen Woodson. In King’s election, 63% of voters opted to recall him, while 37% did not. In Woodson’s election, 64% of voters opted to recall her, while 36% did not. These were the first successful recall elections in Florida’s Lee County in nearly 75 years. According to WGCU’s John Davis, the effort began after the two councilmembers “voted in support of a high-rise development project on the former site of the Red Coconut RV Park, which was destroyed during Hurricane Ian. Members of the town planning board found the proposal to be incompatible with the town’s comprehensive plan.”
Although voters recalled both King and Woodson, only Woodson was removed from office. That’s because Circuit court judge Kyle Cohen issued a stay on King’s recall, allowing him to remain in office pending an appeals court decision.
As of Oct. 13, voters have approved recalls for 41 of the 327 elected officials named in recall efforts this year. That's a success rate of approximately 13%. From 2010 to 2024, an average of 17% of all recalls were successful.
Click here for more details about this year’s recall elections.
Sowing the digital seeds of local elections
Here’s a question I often hear: There's an endless amount of information that you can get about any individual who is online, including candidates. How hard can it be to gather this information, attach it to a candidate’s Ballotpedia profile, and share it with voters?
Yes, it’s true that many of us have abundant information about our cares, concerns, hobbies, travels, and family life online. But most of that information isn’t relevant to what a candidate for office hopes to accomplish if elected.
Our job is to sift through what's irrelevant and focus on gathering some truly valuable pieces of information that are highly informative to the voter.
And that’s why we love questionnaires and surveys — not just our own Candidate Connection Survey, but those from other organizations as well. They are rich in relevant detail and come directly from the candidate.
Another valuable piece of information we’re currently focusing on is endorsements for candidates running for local offices. As I’ve written before, endorsements are an excellent way for voters to get an idea of a candidate's political philosophy and policy goals.
But what if there was a way to make it easier for established groups, new organizations, groups of friends and neighbors, or even individuals to make their candidate endorsements known? Such a platform would make it easier to identify who is backing a candidate for a local office; it has the potential to revolutionize how we think about endorsements themselves.
Currently, a handful of technology companies emerging from Silicon Valley, such as Sway and OpenBallot, are working to create platforms that facilitate digital collaboration among groups of voters. These platforms aim to simplify the process of coordinating online meetings and issuing voter guides for local elections.
The people behind these companies live in areas where voter guides that include highly informative details and context about candidates and issues are commonplace. What they have found when looking at other parts of the country, however, is that such information-rich guides are either rare or don’t exist at all.
The challenge of creating an app that serves as both a voter guide, a community sounding board, and an endorsement portal is substantial. But the potential benefit — to voters and candidates alike — is enormous.
Think about it: This technology could help you get together with friends or others who share your views and concerns to evaluate candidates. Your group may decide to contact candidates directly, interview them, discuss issues, and afterward use the app to produce a digital voter guide that can be shared with even more people.
This would encourage more people to take an active role not only in discussing issues and debating candidates, but also in joining together to make their views about candidates and ballot issues known to the wider community through endorsements, voter guides, and so much more.
There’s the potential here to energize voters, involving them directly in the political activities that once were the sole province of major national organizations and newspaper editorial boards.
This would be a healthy development for our nation.
Here’s how provisional voting works in each state
In most states, voters who arrive at a polling place without their required identification or who aren't listed in the pollbook still have the option to cast a ballot. That’s because of a system called provisional voting.
A provisional ballot is a type of ballot that is not immediately counted. Election officials instead set these types of ballots aside until confirming whether the voter is eligible, has provided the required identification, or meets other requirements. Then, officials will count the provisional ballot as a regular vote.
The Help America Vote Act requires most states to provide for a provisional balloting process. States that had enacted same-day voter registration as of 1993 are exempt from this requirement, and three of those states — Idaho, Minnesota, and New Hampshire — do not have provisional voting.
All 47 other states have provisional voting in at least some situations, though in some states, voters casting a provisional ballot might only be able to vote in certain races.
According to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, there were 1,290,670 provisional ballots cast during the 2024 election, or 0.9% of all ballots cast nationwide.
Across the country, 40 states allow voters to cast a provisional ballot if they do not have the required identification, either because of a voter ID law or because they are a first-time voter who did not provide ID when they registered to vote. Generally, as long as the voter provides a copy of their ID by a set deadline and they are otherwise eligible to vote, the ballot will be counted.
Sometimes, a voter might be directed to cast a provisional ballot if they show up at the wrong voting precinct. In 20 states, their vote will be counted in some of the races, such as federal or statewide races that are the same at every polling place. Maine fully counts provisional ballots that are cast in the wrong precinct. Twenty-six states do not count provisional ballots cast in the wrong precinct at all.
Fourteen states require voters to cast a provisional ballot if a judge or election administration authority orders that polling hours be extended, either in a specific jurisdiction or statewide. As long as the order is not overturned and the voters are otherwise eligible to vote, provisional ballots cast for this reason are counted without any additional action required from the voter.
Nationally, 83 bills have been introduced this year on provisional voting. Four states have enacted five laws on provisional voting. Lawmakers in Maryland and Montana added circumstances in which voters may cast a provisional ballot. Lawmakers in West Virginia removed a circumstance in which voters would need to cast a provisional ballot. Now, West Virginia voters who change their residence within a county may cast a regular ballot during early voting if they vote in the precinct of their new address.
In 2024, New Hampshire passed legislation that removed its provisional voting system. Five states passed six provisional voting laws in 2023. Six states passed seven such laws in 2022.
Click here to learn more about provisional voting in each state.
