Election season is here - if you haven't gotten your sample ballot yet, it should arrive sometime this week.
You should expect your actual ballot in the mail next week.
"You're going to see eight steps of the life of the ballot that we're going to walk through for you, so you can understand and bring the voter into our home,” says Registrar of Voters Andrew McDonald.
The life of a ballot was shown at the Washoe County Registrar of Voter's office.
The first step - is sorting.
"We bring them back here through these doors and then we receive them and process them here at our mail ballot sorter,” says Addie Vetter, Deputy Registrar of Voters in Washoe County.
"It actually gives us the data to check that ballot in to tell the voter that we did receive it and are in possession of it. It takes a picture of the front side of the envelope so it captures the signature and then it's sorted into different groupings."
Checking signatures will no longer be the responsibility of a person, at least for the most part.
"It's the digital software that compares the signature on the outside of the envelope to the main default signature on the voter’s registration record."
The system will give the signature a confidence score – if it’s below 72, a real person will have to verify if the signature matches.
"If it doesn't it goes to signature curing we have five ways to cure here in Washoe County."
Those are either in mail, phone call, in person, text, or through the Secretary of State's office.
Ballots are then batched up in groups of no more than 50, then are extracted.
"They slice the top and the side of the envelope and you actually pull out the sleeve and whatever other documents are in there.”
And not all ballots are treated equal.
"So, a ballot that's crinkled up like this or has rips and tears wouldn't be able to be ran through the scanners so its sent to duplication."
A bipartisan team reviews the ballot to make sure its choices are put on a new ballot so it can be scanned and tabulated.
The primary election is on June 9th.
Early voting starts on May 23rd.
