Someone asked today what countries we send ballots to.  Here’s a list for this election including the number of ballots or applications that were sent to them.

We just completed the final canvass of votes.  School sales tax picked up votes and lost by 262.  84,804 ballots cast.

Full canvass and precinct results are available as well.

We picked up the mail today.  197 Absentees returned.  Of those, 18 are federal only ballots.

Monday, November 10 Update

63 more ballots picked up.  12 of which are federal only.

Monday, November 17 Update

We had 326 provisional ballots.  98 of them will be counted tomorrow.

State law requires that we conduct a retabulation of the votes in 5% (6) precincts in Champaign County as selected by the State Board of Elections.  The retabulation is not particularly valuable in determining that the  vote counting program is working well.

So in Champaign County, we have extended the retabulation procedure to add in a hand count of ballots.  We’ll do that again this year starting at 9:00 am on Thursday, November 13.  We would take any volunteers that we can find as it’s a long process.  Call us if you’d like to participate.

I wrote about our first retabulation on this blog. It’s an interesting process that probably should be part of any post election testing.

The preparation for the final canvas of votes on November 18 is already beginning.  Here are some of the things that will be happening.

First, election judges from each party will pick up absentee ballots from our P.O. Box Thursday, November 6, Monday, November 10, and Tuesday November 18.  On each day, the judges will validate that the absentees were signed by the voter.  The ballots that are picked up on November 6 and 10 will be sealed in a case until November 18.

On Monday, the judges will also begin the process of handling the Federal Write In votes.  These are votes cast on a blank ballot of sorts by Overseas Citizens and Military Personnel.  They can be returned to us by qualified voters if they don’t receive their ballot in the mail.  In some instances, the Federal Write In vote is not cast because the voter will have followed up the write in ballot with an actual ballot.  For any write in votes that are to be cast, a regular ballot will have to be remade by two judges that reflects the intent of the voter.

In the next 10 days, our office will be validating the provisional ballots.  We’ll investigate each provisional ballot and determine whether the ballot should be counted.   By using their unique number of their provisional ballot receipt, a voter may check the status of their provisional vote by going to our website or calling our office to determine their provisional vote outcome.  The Help America Vote Act requires that the provisional voters be kept confidential.

On Tuesday, November 18 at our office the judges will validate the final late arriving absentees.  They will then pull any Federal Write In ballots that are not to be counted.

After the validation is complete, the judges and staff will proceed to opening up the envelopes for the validated absentee and provisional ballots.  We will open up twelve tabulators, just as we have here in the absentee center.  The tabulators will have zero results on them. The ballots will be inserted into those tabulators.  After all the ballots are inserted, the twelve tabulator cards will be inserted into the PC that accumulates election totals and a final result will be announced.  Results will be posted immediately on the web.

People are invited to attend the canvas.  Hopefully the process will take less than three hours, but it’s hard to know for sure.

The election results you’ve seen are unofficial.  The final official canvas is November 18th.  On that day, we will count any provisional ballots that have been validated and any absentee ballots which are postmarked on or before Monday, November 3 (or which have no postmark but are dated on or before Monday, November 3).

With that in mind, here are the potential votes that could come in.  319 people cast provisional ballots.  We’ll begin the work of validating those in the coming days.  There are 576 absentee ballots that have been sent to voters but not returned.  That’s a total of 895 possible votes left to count.

In 2004, we had 292 people vote provisional.  We had 315 absentee ballots that had been sent but not returned.  Of those, 64 provisional ballots were counted and 123 absentee ballots ended up being returned to us.

Clearly, the interest in this election was high, even though the turnout numbers don’t differ much from 2004.  So perhaps more of those absentee voters will have put those ballots in the mail by Monday.  We’ll begin to see in the coming days.

I’m hearing generally positive things from the precincts.  Certainly some confusion and lots of busyness which certainly creates challenges for judges.  Some polling places can handle it well, others not as well.

Please give me any comments, suggestions, and yes complaints.