We all have our morning routines.
And lately, mine starts here:
with an obsessive daily check of the status of my absentee ballot
Okay, so it looks like the county board of elections received my ballot on October 27,
but it says they still need to process my voter ID envelope and verify the signature..
Even before the coronavirus struck, more Americans each election were either voting early or
voting by mail.
But in 2020, these numbers are expected to skyrocket.
The way Americans choose their President is complicatedー even in a relatively normal
election year.
In 2020, voters are facing a pandemic,
an underfunded postal service
and the closure of polling locations in battleground states like Georgia, Ohio,
Arizona, and Texas.
It’s enough to make you want to just tune out until it’s over.
But once you know how votes are counted, you can understand why yours counts.
In most states, there are four ways Americans can vote:
in person before election day, on election day, mailing an absentee ballot, or placing
it in a secure dropbox.
Each of the more than 3,000 counties in the US has its own rules,
but voting in person generally looks something like this:
When they show up to vote, election officials check each voter’s name and address
to make sure they’re registered, and voting in the right place.
These employees always work in teams of two,
and both workers can’t be from the same political party.
Voters cast their ballots in private,
either by filling out a paper ballot
or using an electronic voting machine.
Election officials collect the completed paper ballot.
They check the voter’s name off the list, and place the ballot in a secure box.
At polling sites with electronic voting machines,
a computer records two separate pieces of information:
the voter’s name and the date they voted, and their vote choices.
Separating names and vote choices ensures that voters preferences stay secret.
The machine also prints out a receipt with just that first piece of information.
Election officials check the voter’s name off the list, and place the receipt in a secure
box.
Step one of the process looks pretty much the same,
whether you’re voting early or on Election Day.
For those voting absentee, it looks a little different.
In some states, every single registered voter gets an absentee ballot in the mail.
In most states, voters have to fill out a
request form like this one to get a ballot mailed to them.
Once they fill out their ballot, voters can either mail it to their county board of elections,
drop it off in person, or place it in an official ballot drop box.
Before they can be counted, absentee ballots have to go through an extra step: verification.
Election officialsー always working in those bi-partisan teamsーscan the sealed envelopes
into a computer system.
Next, they check the signature on the ballot envelope against the signature in the state’s
voter registration database.
In Missouri, voters also need to get their ballot envelope stamped and signed by a notary
public.
Other states require a witness’s signature.
If an envelope is missing one of these requirements,
the whole ballot is invalid.
Most states start this whole verifying process weeks before Election Day.
But Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, two crucial battleground states,
don’t start verifying mail-in ballots until Election Day.
Anotherー Michiganー doesn’t start until the day before.
Once the envelopes are verified, election officials unseal them and store the ballots
in a secure box until it’s time to start counting.
All paper ballots — from both absentee and in-person voting — are tabulated using a
machine.
The data is stored on a memory card, and the counted ballots go back in their secure box.
Election officials combine the counts from the paper ballots and the electronic voting
machines,
and the individual polling places report those numbers to the county board of electionsー
which reports them to the state board of elections.
At both the county and state level, members of one political party can’t have a majority.
On election day, polling places and county boards are
continuously counting and reporting new numbers every hour.
State boards of elections typically post the counts online after the polls close,
and keep updating them as more numbers come in.
It takes a while for all these votes to be counted — sometimes hours, sometimes days.
When you hear this on TV on election night — "And look at all these wins. we're projecting for Hillary Clinton" —
That doesn’t mean all the votes in that state have been counted.
News networks make projections based on a certain percentage of votesー and they don’t
always get it right:
A big call to make CNN announces that we call Florida in the Al Gore column
...standby, standby...CNN is moving our earlier declaration of Florida back to the “too
close to call” column.
News networks make a lot of money marketing “election night” like it’s the Super Bowl,
but there’s something to be said for adjusting our expectations a little — especially during
a pandemic.
After all, the law in most states give state boards of election weeks to make sure their
vote counts are complete and accurate before certifying them as “official.”
I’m going to keep checking up on my ballot every morning.
And reminding my friends to do the same.
But on election night, I’d rather leave the projections to the pundits and rest up.
Democracy is a marathon, not a sprint.