The journey of a mail-in ballot
This is a cross-published piece with Mustang News, more information can be found here.
Joanne Johnson has worked in the elections office for two years, and today she’s verifying signatures.
“A lot of people sign with squiggly lines, and it’s interesting that squiggly lines look the same over time,” Johnson said. “So if it’s a squiggly line we check it because we have signatures from prior elections and if it looks the same it’s good to go.”
Every election year, dozens of ballots are mailed to the San Luis Obispo County Elections Office. Once ballots arrive, they’re put through a scanner that captures the voters’ signatures.
Trained staff determine if the signature matches the voter on file, the machine will verify using signatures from past elections or driver’s licenses.
Once the signatures are verified, the ballots go to the slicer. This machine opens the ballots for staff members to manually remove and inspect that ballots aren’t damaged.
“We remove the ballot from the envelope, and then we have our election staff that inspects the ballots to make sure that there is no red pen, no damage, nor writing all over it, and that the voters just followed the instructions and bubbled [their vote] in,” said County Clerk-Recorder Elaina Cano.
If a ballot is damaged, a team of staff members hold the original ballot and call out every vote marked so another member can copy the same choices on a new ballot.
Finally, another member inspects the original ballot and the new ballot to ensure they match.
Ballots are sorted into batches of 200 for tabulation, which is also known as the counting machine. This machine can hold more ballots and count them quicker.
If the machine rejects any ballots, they are set aside and a ballot that has been remade is added to keep the batch at 200.
If the machine detects any irregular ballots they are displayed on screens, and a team made up of two election employees agrees on the voters’ intent.
Once the ballots are counted, they are boxed and sealed with a tamper evident seal for storage.
“So all of our election supplies, ballots, envelopes, and anything that has to do with this election gets stored in a secured area for 22 months, and then after 22 months, we have a shredding company come out and shreds all the documents,” Cano said. “Then it’s right in time for the new election.”
The last day to mail in a voter ballot is on Nov. 5. The county elections office must receive the ballot no later than seven days after the election to be counted.
