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Election officials have braced for an unprecedented wave of mail-in ballots. What safeguards are in place to track individual ballots as they travel to voters and back to the election office?

Due to the pandemic, millions are voting by mail in the 2020 presidential election.

Election officials have braced for an unprecedented wave of mail-in ballots.  What safeguards are in place to track individual ballots as they travel to voters and back to the election office?

The Tech Behind Mail-In Voting

Tech Behind Mail-In Voting

Due to the pandemic, millions are voting by mail in the 2020 presidential election.

Tech & Engineering

The Tech Behind Mail-In VotingPublished: October 28, 2020Donald Trump: I just want to thank you… and get out and vote.Joseph Biden: Show up and vote. You will determine the outcome of this election.Narrator: Due to the pandemic, voting by mail is huge right now.News clip: Election officials are bracing for an unprecedented wave of mail-in ballots.Narrator: In 2016, less than 34 million ballots were mailed in in total. This year, voters have requested over 90 million ballots to be submitted by mail, and a week before the election more than 45 million have already been returned. And for it all to succeed, there’s one basic requirement for a ballot.Whitney Quesenbery: It has to make it all the way through the mail in both directions. Narrator: From your local election office to you, the voter and back again. A vote by mail ballot that can’t be counted is really, to me, the ultimate election tragedy. We have to have an election system that supports people through the process of voting so that their ballots get counted. Which is where the Center for Civic Design comes in.Jessenia Eliza: They have worked exclusively with the USPS in trying to create the... I guess you can say the perfect election mail envelope.Quesenbery: The envelope is kind of a technical machine. It’s a machine you’ve designed to carry the ballot to and from the voter. Narrator: The US Postal Service will repeatedly scan and sort that envelope, which means...Eliza: You want to ensure that those mail pieces are easily visible, that they can be recognized, that everything is clearly printed.Narrator: Step 1: start with a rectangle. USPS sorting machines use the rectangular shape to orient the envelope.Quesenbery: And it assumes that it’s wider than it is tall. Anything that’s different is going to get spit out. The machines are going to say, “I don’t know what to do with this.” And it has to get hand processed. And that makes it take more time. Narrator: Then there’s what goes on that rectangle. It’s what the automated envelope reading machines are looking for. The upper right corner is reserved for postage and several vertical bars.Quesenbery: They call that the facing... Anna, what is it? The facing…Anna Haraseyko: Facing identification mark.Quesenbery: Thank you. That’s to help the machines know which is the front of the envelope.Narrator: There’s the return address, the delivery address, the election mail logo...Quesenbery: That’s the swoopy thing that says election mail with the stars behind it. Only election offices are allowed to use it. And all of those things need to be in specific areas and specific places. That’s a lot to put on a little tiny rectangle.Haraseyko: A lot of what we did was just sort of moving around blocks of text on the envelope to find that perfect sweet spot where the envelope was easy for the machines to read, but also easy for the voters to understand and also easy for the election officials to receive and get the information that they needed. Quesenbery: And then you need the magic thing, which is the intelligent mail barcode.Eliza: An intelligent mail barcode is actually an encoded string of digits.Narrator: This string of vertical bars is code for a 20-31 digit number that contains a wealth of information about each envelope.Eliza: The first element in that barcode is something called a barcode identifier.Narrator: For election mail, it’s usually two digits, and usually zero zero.Eliza: The piece that follows that is the service type ID or the STID. This is gonna identify the class of mail.Narrator: Ballots are sent as First-Class mail or USPS Marketing Mail.Eliza: And as of August 2018, it tells us whether or not that piece is a ballot.Quesenbery: So just by reading the barcode, they can tell that it’s something to do with an election.Eliza: And it ensures that as election mail is moving through the postal stream, those pieces are being treated with efficiency as they’re being processed. After the STID, you have the mailer ID or MID. Whoever owns that MID, will own any associated scan data every time that intelligent mail barcode is scanned. Narrator: For ballots, the mailer ID usually belongs to the local or state election office or the vendor helping to provide mail services to the jurisdiction or state.Eliza: After the MID is the unique serial number for every single voter. The last piece is the zip code or what we also call the routing code. And so when you string that all together, you’ve got your intelligent mail barcode. As that ballot is traveling through the mail, that intelligent mail barcode is being scanned. And this helps us ensure a ballot’s full chain of custody in the mail. So you can watch that piece as it’s moving and ensure that it’s getting to the place that it needs to get to.Narrator: Because the barcode is encoded, an individual voter can’t use it to follow their ballot. But the USPS and other tracking services can.Eliza: If there’s ever an instance where it seems like a ballot hasn’t been delivered or received by the election office, using that intelligent mail barcode can help the USPS track down where that specific envelope might be.Narrator: So once you drop your ballot in the mail, there are safeguards in place to make sure your vote gets where it needs to go.Eliza: The USPS is definitely an innovative institution, always thinking of methods in which to improve the services that they provide to customers, especially when it comes to election mail.Narrator: Most states allow voters to drop their mail-in ballots off at the local election office in person. In many states, if you order a mail-in ballot, you can still vote in person. The process varies from state to state, but may involve surrendering your ballot to the polling place or election center before voting in person.Despite the systems in place to get your ballot where it needs to go, issues may still arise, leading to your vote being rejected. These include:● problems with your signature● not filling out all required information on the envelope like the date, your address, or birthdate● and not mailing or dropping off your ballot on timeQuesenbery: Our work is about making sure that everybody who is eligible and wants to vote can vote. And maybe even going a step further and saying it’s about making sure that we encourage everyone who’s eligible to vote.Narrator: For more information on how to vote, visit vote.gov, eac.gov, howto.vote

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The Tech Behind Mail-In Voting

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Support Provided By

Explore More

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