OWINGS MILLS, Md. — Twice a day, 36 of these boxes are brought back to the Baltimore County Board of Elections office. Al is filled with ballots returned to drop boxes. Three times a day, staffers head to the post office to pick up mail-in ballots sent there. And that's just the beginning of the process.
"We're processing as fast as possible,” Baltimore County Board of Elections director Ruie Lavoie told WMAR-2 News. "And the reason it’s such a process, there’s so many checks and balances to ensure everybody’s vote is counted."
More than 60,000 mail-in ballots have been counted in the county so far, but more than 125,000 were requested.
"It doesn’t happen instantaneously," Lavoie said. "As you see, we’re getting thousands of ballots in. So when the ballots come in, they’re date-stamped; they’re marked ballot drop box if we receive them by the drop box or by mail. All of them are stamped with the date that we receive them in the office, and then we start the process to receive them in the system. Once they’re received in the system, that’s when the voter is notified. Once they’re canvassed, the voter is also notified."
Voters choose whether to be notified via email or text. Those notifications are sent out nightly after 6 p.m. Every ballot has a tracking number. You can check the status of your ballot online here.
All ballots are counted in Maryland, regardless of when the race is called. The local boards of elections have until November 15 to certify, so they have until then to finish counting.
"It’s always been like that. I think people didn’t really notice it because mail-in ballots used to not be as popular. Now it’s very popular," Lavoie said.
About voters will have their mail-in ballots held back to be counted on November 13 as part of the provisional canvas. As the State Board of Elections explains, "Some mail-in ballots will be counted when the provisional ballots are counted. This helps preserve the secrecy of the votes on provisional ballots. For example, if only one voter in a precinct voted a provisional ballot, it is possible you could know how that voter voted. If five mail-in ballots are counted with that provisional ballot, the selections of the provisional voter remain secret."
In Baltimore County, that will apply to about 1,200 voters - five of each ballot style, and there are 243 ballot styles, one for each precinct.
"So some voters will receive a message saying we received your ballot but they don’t get the ‘we’ve accepted it’ - accepted means counted - until later in the process and that’s because they’re one of the five that were held off each ballot style," Lavoie explained.
Patty Malesh and three of her friends returned their ballots on Thursday, October 31.
"Even when I dropped mine off in the primary, there was a week between, it's been received, and it's been counted."
But none of them have been notified yet that their ballots were received.
"Right now, just in my little pod, we've got four voters that are really concerned that 'Hey, I want to make sure my vote is counted.' And until we get that confirmation, I don't think anybody's thinking about anything else."
Malesh is familiar with how the system works, and how bogged down it gets. She served as a Democrat chief judge during the May primary.
"There’s no training. They go in and show you how the machines work and give you a 300-page manual and say, ‘Read this.’ And I read it, and I had questions. They said we’ll have certain times where you can call in with your questions, and I had 12 questions. In the manual, in three different places, it says to act differently for the same thing."
When she called the County Board of Elections with questions, she says they went unanswered.
When problems popped up on primary day - ranging from potential voter intimidation to technical questions - she says her concerns also went unaddressed. She and her Republican counterpart decided not to return for the general election.
The elections director said she wasn't aware of these concerns, and they likely weren't passed down to the right people, but she plans to look into them now.
"The one thing I can say having been a chief judge, I can say that I’m not worried about fraud in any way because that’s on lockdown," Malesh said. "Everybody in power has really paid attention to make sure that it’s almost impossible, if not impossible, for any of that. So I’m not worried about that. I’m worried about making sure that other people aren’t freaking out like we are," she said of the mail-in ballot notification system.
Mail-in ballots must be postmarked or dropped off by 8 p.m. on Election Day to be counted.