Why you can trust voting by mail

I worked two months for our county on the 2016 elections ( before, during, after). This is what I learned and observed:

Return envelopes have only the voter’s name and address printed on them. Workers rip the signature covers off the envelopes before feeding them into a machine. The machine scans each signature and barcoded name, sending it electronically to election clerks who visually compare the signature on the ballot envelope to the signature on the voter’s registration card. If the voter has voted by mail before, those signatures are available for comparison as well. If the signature doesn’t compare well, the ballot will be checked by another clerk. If they still can’t find comparison, the County Clerk or Assistant County Clerk will check the signature. If the decision is the signature does not compare, the voter is contacted and given an opportunity to cure the signature on the ballot envelope. The voter will be contacted using the phone number or email provided by the voter on the envelope, or a letter will be mailed to the voter with a Signature Verification Form to submit prior to two days before certification of the vote.

The ballots that passed signature verification are manually removed from their envelopes and the envelopes are saved at the processing table to make sure the number of voted ballots matches the number of counted envelopes. Envelopes are then removed from the table, and ballots are inspected for tears or mismarks. The ballots are then put into batches and sent to the ballot counting room for scanning. After the ballots are scanned, they are secured in boxes. This takes about five to ten days for the bulk of it to be done. Then comes the recheck, statistical sampling of precincts ( human counting and comparing with machine counts) to make sure a systematic error didn’t occur. Two people always work together to check each other’s work.

All ballots are saved.

Here’s what the public doesn’t understand: when the election results are announced on the news election night or the next day, less than half of the ballots have been counted due to the large number of mail ballots that are brought in during the last day and received in the mail after the election, but postmarked on or before Election Day.

The trustworthiness and validity of in-person voting relies heavily on the poll workers themselves. As to the end of the night ballot transfer, during the transfer one person took the ballot boxes in their car while another poll worker followed in their car to the county building. There were always two people in command and no boxes of ballots could be under any one individual’s control.

As to provisional ballots, before my election work,

I had heard they weren’t counted except in close elections. Not true. All ballots are counted (except those cast by voters who are not qualified to vote). The provisional ballots are placed in envelopes by the voter and are later checked for eligibility of who voted. Fortunately, there are few provisional ballots to slow down the process.

At the end of my two months of election work, I came away with a deep awe of the election process. The thoroughness, the quality checking, the rechecking each step of the way convinced me that in our county, elections are done fair and honest.

In this climate regarding the legitimacy of voteby-mail, I trust it completely. Know your vote will count because many people back in the county elections office are making sure of it.

Note: For the Nov. 3 election, all voters were mailed a ballot on Oct. 5. Voters do not have to return their ballot through the mail. They can drop it off at one of the 15 drop boxes that will be set up in the county. There will also be 17 in-person voting locations open Oct. 31 to Nov. 3. During these four days, any voter can go to any location to drop off their voted ballot, get a replacement ballot, vote on the accessible tablet, vote a Spanish ballot on the tablet, register and vote on the same day, and any other voter service.