Oregon Mail-in Ballot. How long does it take to count one?

[Roxy66]

I was just watching CNN and they had Susan Roesgen reporting from Lake County and they were discussing why it took so long to count the absentee ballots. She was speaking with the election supervisor of Lake County, and why it took 24 hrs to count 11,000 ballots. She was running through a list of things they have to do before they actually count each ballot:

1.) "Verify each signature from application to the ballot"

2.) "Separate those"

3.) "Open up the ballot envelope"

4.) "Then they look for 2 sets of initials to make sure it's been validated"

5.) "Separate those out"

6.) "Then they come over to a scanning team"

7.) "We match them up to a report"

8.) "Make sure that our numbers match"

...and "all that" they say can take up to 5 mins or more for Each absentee ballot. Susan was comparing how the computer talley takes 30 sec to count an entire precint.....

My question is: How long will it take Oregon to count their ballots...if they use those calculations. It sounds really silly to me.

[moonlady0623]

1. Not "Absentee"

All ballots are opened election day and counted; the counting is usually completed that evening.

Because we vote by mail, signature verification takes place as the ballots come into the county election office. On election day the ballots themselves run through the tallying machines.