OWINS 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 in boxes. Three times a day, employees go to the post office to pick up the ballots sent there. And this is just the beginning of the process.

“We’re processing as quickly as possible,” Ruie Lavoie, director of the Baltimore County Board of Elections told WMAR-2 News. “And the reason it’s such a process, there are so many checks and balances to make sure everyone’s vote is counted.”

So far, more than 60,000 postal ballots have been counted in the county, but more than 125,000 have been requested.

“It doesn’t happen instantly,” Lavoie said. “As you can see, we are receiving thousands of ballots. So when the ballots come in, they are date stamped; they are marked ballot box if we receive them by mailbox or mail. All. they are date stamped when we receive them in the office and then we start the process of getting them into the system, when the voter is notified they are also notified.”

Voters choose whether to be notified by email or text message. These notifications are sent in the evening after 18.00. Each 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. Local electoral commissions have until November 15 to certify, so they have until then to finish counting.

“It’s always been that way. I think people didn’t really notice it because mail-in ballots weren’t as popular. Now it’s very popular,” Lavoie said.

Voters’ postal ballots will be held to be counted on November 13 as part of the provisional canvass. As the State Board of Elections explains, “Some mail ballots will be counted when the provisional ballots are counted. This helps keep votes on provisional ballots secret. For example, if only one voter in a constituency voted a provisional ballot. , you may know how that voter voted If five mail-in ballots are counted with that provisional ballot, the provisional voter’s selections remain secret.”

In Baltimore County, this will apply to about 1,200 voters — five of each voting style, and there are 243 voting styles, one for each precinct.

“So some voters will get a message saying we’ve received your ballot, but they don’t get ‘accepted’ — accepted means counted — until later in the process, and that’s because I’m one of the five who were detained. outside of each voting style,” Lavoie explained.

Patty Malesh and three of her friends returned their ballots on Thursday, October 31st.

“Even when I left mine in the primary, it was a week in between, it was received and it was counted.”

But none of them have yet been notified that their ballots have been received.

“Right now, just in my little group, we have four voters who are really concerned that, ‘Hey, I want to make sure my vote is counted.’ And until we get that confirmation, I don’t think anyone is thinking about anything else.”

Malesh is familiar with how the system works and how stuck it gets. She served as the Democratic chief justice during the May primary.

“There is no preparation. They come 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’re going to have certain times where you can call in with your questions, and we had 12 questions in the manual, in three different places, telling you to do different things for the same thing.”

When she called the County Board of Elections with questions, she says they went unanswered.

When issues arose on primary day — from potential voter intimidation to technical questions — she says her concerns, too, went unaddressed. She and her Republican counterpart decided not to return in the general election.

The election director said she was not aware of these concerns and that they likely had not been forwarded to the right people, but she plans to look into them now.

“The one thing I can say having been the chief justice, I can say I’m not worried about fraud in any way because it’s blocked,” Malesh said. “Everyone in power has really paid attention to make sure it’s almost impossible, if not impossible, for any of this. So I’m not worried about that. I’m worried about making sure other people don’t get scared like we are,” she said of the mail notification system.

Postal ballots must be postmarked or submitted by 8:00 PM on Election Day to be counted.