An inside look into where your ballot goes after you vote

Hundreds of thousands of people across South Florida have voiced their choice as Election Day draws near. But have you ever thought about what happens to your ballot in Broward County when it leaves your hands?

“You know, democracy is real,” said Joe Scott, Broward County Supervisor of Elections. “We make sure we’re keeping the process and the system secure so that the votes do really reflect the intent of the voters in our community.

When voting by mail, your ballot’s first stop is a mailroom.

“That’s where they scan the barcode and take a picture of the signature that’s on the outside of the envelope,” said Joe Scott.

Staffers will compare the signatures based on what the voter has on file. If there is a discrepancy, they will reach out to you. Once everything is cleared, the envelope is opened.

“The ballots also go inside a secrecy sleeve,” said Joe Scott. “So there’s sort of this second envelope inside which creates a little bit more of a separation between that envelope that has your name on it and that secret ballot. Once the two are separated, we’ll never be able to figure out which ballot goes with which envelope.”

Then they are scanned into tabulation machines, which collect all the numbers.

If you voted in person, the process is similar to what will happen on November 5th. The ballot will be fed into a machine that will record the numbers before the actual paper is sent back to headquarters.

Those paper ballots are already there for those who have voted early. The votes will be divided by precinct for a second vote, which is called an audit, as well as for later storage.

“The voter’s actually putting it into the machine, after you scan it in, it drops into the bin below,” said Joe Scott.

“And these folks have no capability to change any of what they’re handling?” 7News’ Nicole Linsalata asked.

“No, I mean there’s no pens or anything, they just have gloves and hands, and again there’s all these windows.”

Cameras are located in every room where ballots are handled, as well as in the warehouse.

The headquarters has what’s called a transparency corridor, where you literally can walk inside the building and watch the process from these glass windows.

All the ballot numbers from mail-in to early voting, and eventually November 5th, will end up stored in the machines in the tabulation room, which the Supervisor of Elections says are not connected to the internet.

“One thing you do see in this room is that they use green pens,” said Joe Scott. “So green pens are the only pens that are allowed in here because the green pens won’t scan.”

Eventually, every paper ballot will undergo an audit on a different server and with no internet.

However, on the evening of the election, there are restrictions the county follows.

“We are not allowed to do it before seven o’clock, so right at seven o’clock, that’s when we get the results, we move it over and we upload it,” said Joe Scott. “So you got to give us a few minutes, but we try to get as close to seven o’clock as we can. We don’t want to do this in darkness, we want to do it in the light, show people the whole process.”

After the two scans, all of the paper ballots are stored, by law, for 22 months in the case of issues such as a recount.

If you already voted by mail in Miami-Dade or Broward Counties, you can check on the Supervisor of Election website to make sure that your ballot was counted.