How to track your ballot and what to do if it’s damaged

Election Officials in Vancouver, Washington, are encouraging voters to check the status of their absentee ballots after an arson attack set a ballot box on fire on Monday morning, damaging hundreds of ballots a week before Election Day.

While incidents of bad actors targeting ballot drop boxes are rare, experts told ABC News that the infrastructure surrounding absentee voting over the past decade has allowed election officials to be prepared for such incidents, through the use of 24-hour surveillance, fire suppression systems, and advanced ballot tracking software.

“These are the kinds of scenarios that election officials think about at night and have been thinking about for years as part of their contingency planning,” said Claire Woodall-Vogg, the former executive director of the Milwaukee Election Commission. “While it is very rare, it is something your election official has certainly considered.”

Monday’s arson — which destroyed hundreds of ballots in Vancouver, Washington and three in Portland, Oregon — follows other incidents last week when ballots in Florida and Arizona were damaged in transit. Officials in Phoenix also arrested a man for arson last week after allegedly acting out lit a fire in a USPS collection mailbox, destroying five ballots, and federal prosecutors in Florida charged another man last week for allegedly throwing away hundreds of election mail items, including at least one ballot.

Here’s what you need to know about dealing with a damaged ballot.

How can voters find out if their ballot is affected?

Voters who suspect their ballot may be affected should contact their local election office to confirm whether their ballot was received, said Brian Hinkle, senior voting policy researcher at the Movement Advancement Project.

Forty-seven states offer free ballot tracking services, allowing voters to confirm whether their ballots have been mailed, received and counted. In Clark County, Washington, where Vancouver is located, voters can track their ballots via the Online tool VoteWA.

“If they don’t receive notification that their ballot has been accepted for counting or even received by the county office for acceptance, they will know something is wrong,” said Steve Olsen, the president of BallotTrax, a software company. whose ballot tracking service covers 28% of US voters.

Where possible, election officials will also attempt to contact any voter they believe may be affected by an incident to ensure their ballots are received or to assist with a replacement ballot. Because the USPS recommends that voters mail in their ballot by October 29 to ensure it is received on time, some voters requesting replacement ballots may need to vote in person instead of voting by mail again.

“There are systems in every state, with every legal system, to ensure that someone’s voice is not taken away from someone by a criminal act like this,” Woodall-Vogg said.

How can election officials track individual ballots?

According to Olsen, election officials can track individual ballots by using “intelligent postal barcodes” embedded in absentee ballot envelopes.

“Voters can track their ballots the same way they would track package delivery,” Hinkle said.

The barcodes — which are printed on the envelopes sent to voters, and on the return envelopes for the ballots themselves — allow voters to track when their absentee ballot is mailed, returned and received by election officials.

The tracking technology cannot see how a ballot was filled out.

“What we’re actually doing is tracking the envelopes,” Olsen said. “We do not have access to the vote.”

Ballot Trax works with election offices in 546 counties across the United States, reaching 72 million voters and tracking more than 240 million ballots. The company was founded in 2009 to help the city of Denver with elections and expanded tenfold in 2020 as large parts of the country switched to voting by mail due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Individual counties foot the bill for the BallotTrax service, which allows voters to sign up to receive free updates on their voting status, Olsen said. Even if a voter doesn’t opt ​​in to tracking, election offices can still track ballots to identify issues.

Once a ballot reaches a local elections office and is removed from the return envelope, the ballot is no longer identifiable to a particular voter, thus preserving the anonymity of the vote.

“Once the ballot is removed from the envelope, which has all the identifying marks on it, at that point it becomes anonymous,” Olsen said.

What happens to damaged ballots?

If a ballot is damaged in transit but is still recognizable, election officials may attempt to recreate the ballot so it can be fed into a voting machine. Bipartisan teams are involved in the process known as “ballot duplication.”

“Election workers will reconstruct the ballot to preserve voter intent and translate it into a clean new ballot,” Hinke said.

If a voter suspects that their ballot may be damaged, they should contact their local elections office to confirm whether their ballot has been received or if they need to request a replacement ballot.

Are ballot boxes safe?

Despite recent high-profile incidents, experts say ballot boxes are still one of the safest ways to vote.

Most ballot boxes are tamper-proof, bolted to the ground, supervised 24 hours a day, and equipped with fire suppression systems. In most areas, ballots are collected by teams of two people.

“We have a chain of custody system in place so we know when we picked up the ballots and when we dropped them off, and all the ballots have barcodes on them so they are secure,” said George Dreckmann. a longtime poll worker in Milwaukee. “The letterbox system is therefore just as safe as sending it by post, and in some cases perhaps even safer.”

In many states, drop boxes are equipped with fire suppression systems that extinguish fires with powder instead of water, preventing further damage to ballots. Although the fire suppression system did not work effectively during Monday’s arson in Clark County, election officials have credited the fire suppression system with saving more than 400 ballots in neighboring Multnomah County, Oregon.

“These boxes are very secure and voters should feel confident using them,” Hinkle said.