WASHINGTON — You cast your ballot on election day in one of the 55 drop box locations across the District. So now what happens to it? And how long will it take to get that vote counted? WUSA9 went to the DC Board of Elections Warehouse in Northeast to find out.
Whether your ballot was mailed-in and dropped off at the warehouse or it was picked up from one of the drop-boxes, once your ballot arrives at the DC BOE warehouse it will make 8 more stops over the course of 2 to 3 days before it is officially counted.
The first stop that your ballot is going to make is with one of the 60 ballot processers working in the warehouse. One of them will remove the flap covering your signature.
Once your signature is exposed, then it’s off to the sorting machine where it will be separated by ward.
When an envelope comes off the sorter, it is processed into 3 different categories:
- Verified signatures
- A signature that doesn’t match
- An envelop that doesn’t have a signature.
All signature are verified by 3 different people. If they can’t verify the signature against their records then the BOE will send and email you a letter so that you can clear it up. You have 10 days to do that.
Then it’s back to the sorting machine. This time, the envelopes with verified signatures make their way to the floor for opening.
Once opened, ballots are separated and sorted into precinct order.
According to the D.C. BOE, since ballots started being processed here on October 5, approximately 280,000 ballots have come into the warehouse. Of that total, less than 50,000 still need to be counted on Election Day. Those numbers don't account for ballots that will be picked up once the polls close across the District at 8 p.m.
The final step of the process is the scanner. All ballots with verified signatures are scanned onto a memory stick and then driven down to the DC BOE headquarters where they’ll be officially tallied.
DC BOE confirmed to WUSA9 that even if you drop your ballot off at 7:59 – it will still be counted.
The Board of Elections estimates it takes 2-3 days to count a ballot once it is received.
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