Ned Foley WaPo oped:

Meanwhile, if healthy voters are expected to cast ballots in person rather than by mail in November, it must be possible to actually vote when going to the polls. Having to wait four hours in line, as many reportedly did in Georgia, does not qualify as an adequate opportunity to vote.

What can be done to prevent this kind of functional disenfranchisement from recurring in the fall?

Voting rights groups could, at their own expense, print provisional ballots that voters could rely on in an emergency if local election administrators fail to meet their statutory obligation to supply backup ballots.

How would this work? Voting rights groups could send “election protection observers” to polling places with ballots for that precinct, plus envelopes that would indicate all the information required for casting a provisional ballot: name, address, signature, driver’s license or other identification number (depending on state law), and so forth. These observers would advise voters, upon arrival at their polling place, to take a cellphone selfie and text or email it to the voting rights group to document their time of arrival. After an hour wait, if voters still had not had an opportunity to cast a ballot provided by an official poll worker — and if they were unable to wait any longer — then the voting rights group could give these voters one of its privately printed emergency ballots.

After voters completed the ballot and filled in the required information on the accompanying envelope, they would seal the ballot in the envelope to preserve its secrecy. Then they would take a cellphone photo of the sealed envelope and text or email that second photo to the same voting rights group. Timestamps on both photos would show that the voter had waited more than an hour before being forced to rely on this remedy.

Voters would then hand the sealed envelope to the election protection observer, who later would give all the envelopes to the official poll workers. In effect, the election protection observers would act as emergency poll workers.

Would these provisional ballots count? They should, in order to avoid wrongful disenfranchisement.