Reply #4: It does vary, depending upon the state...

[claudiajean]

I'm from the West Coast, to answer your other question. But I'm pretty familiar with regional differences in election administration.

In some states, you can only get a ballot if you are truly away or disabled or over 65. In other states, you can become a permanent absentee voter and vote in every election by mail. Oregon is entirely vote by mail, as are remote portions of Alaska, Hawai'i, Washington and California, due to the inaccessibility of polling places.

California, Oregon, and Washington have similar handling for vote by mail ballots (these include traditional absentee ballots for those away from home, local absentee ballots on demand, true vote by mail precincts, etc. Any Mail Ballot). Oregon is entirely vote by mail.

In every state that offers ballots by mail in any format, the voter receives a paper ballot or paper punchcard that may be intended for hand counting, punch reading, or optical scanning. Each voter also receives a secrecy envelope - a plain envelope that is the inner layer, and an outer envelope for mailing that contains the address of the election office, and on the back side has the voter oath, signature line, and witness line(s) if necessary. in large jurisdictions, the outer envelope may also have a barcode to speed up incoming processing.

In the three west coast states, every voter's signature is verified against the signature on file for the voter (this is speeded up with a digital database of the signatures) to prevent ballot fraud.

The west coast is unique in this, as a universal procedure. In many states, only a specific sample, ranging from 5% - 50% of the ballots are randomly sampled for voter signature verification.

After the signature is verified (or, depending upon the state, the batch is sampled and some signatures are verified), the outer envelopes are removed, leaving the ballots in just the plain secrecy envelopes (this is the reason for the layers of envelopes - to ensure that the ballot is secret).

With no voter identification with the ballots any longer, the secrecy envelopes are removed, and the ballots are inspected to ensure that they are readable by the card readers or optical scans. Unreadable ballots generally are forwarded to a canvassing board consisting of members of all major political parties, and under supervision of all parties are enhanced to ensure the voter's intent can be read by the machines.

The ballots are then secured in batches, and stored in a vault or locked cage until election day. On election day, the ballots are counted, and the results embargoed until the polls have closed in that jurisdiction.

Some states that have limited absentee ballot eligibility (you have to be out of the area or disabled to receive an absentee) only count absentee ballots if they are "outcome determinate". This means, only if a race would be decided by the results of the absentees, are the absentees actually opened, verified and counted.

Eg: Jane Doe has 10,000 votes, Jack Roe has 5,000 votes. There are 365 absentees issued in that jurisdiction - it doesn't matter what the absentee voters voted, even if all of the votes are for jack, he still loses. So the time to verify and count that ballots is not expended. The voters are simply credited with voting and the ballots remain in the unopened envelopes.

I'm sure there's more that people may be curious about - feel free to ask me about anything I have left out.