delivered it to the post office
on my parent's anniversary

Last edited Tue Oct 22, 2024, 07:04 PM - Edit history (1)

Remember -- these ballots don't mean anything until they are tallied (that is, "counted&quot .

In Virginia, we have three sessions to tally mail-in ballots.

1. One week before Election Day -- Tuesday -- we set up a voting machine(s), open mail-in ballots, check for signatures, etc., then feed the ballots into the scanner. When all are run through the scanner, TURN OFF THE SCANNER, LOCK AND SEAL THE SCANNER.

2. The Saturday before Election Day; open the sealed scanner, turn it on, process all mail-in ballots that have been received since the Tuesday processing session. When all are run through the scanner, TURN OFF THE SCANNER, LOCK AND SEAL THE SCANNER. The scanner which is locked onto the top of a ballot box -- now has inside its ballot box all mail-in ballots received to date.

3. On Election Day, open the sealed scanner, turn it on, process all mail-in ballots that have been received since the Saturday processing session. At 7:00 PM, when polls close, activate the CLOSE POLLS process on the scanner, which prints a tally of all ballots processed since the first pre-processing session on the previous Tuesday. Print four copies of the tally tape -- one for immediate use to report results to State; three to be stapled to three required reports.

4. Late-arriving mail-in ballots are tallied after noon on the Friday after Election Day, provided the ballots are postmarked on or before Election Day. Any ballots not so postmarked are rejected and not tallied.

Thus, by late on election night, in Virginia, we have the results of mail-in voting.

WHEN DOES PENNSYLVANIA TALLY MAIL-IN BALLOTS? Do they wait until Election Day to tally all ballots, or, do they do pre-Election-Day processing with tallying on Election Day?

Here in PA, the GOP legislature refused to update the law to allow election workers to actually remove ballots from envelopes until the polls open election day. Then they will be stacked and fed into the scanners. That operation will go 24/7.

the state legislature to allow pre=canvassing.

It boggles the mind. But they can't let a good CT go to waste.

too.

My wife and I, registered PA voters, mailed in our ballots from Rwanda last week.

Because the Marburg Virus outbreak shut down the US Embassy, we were not able to send them by diplomatic mail, the way they suggest doing. Instead, we are relying on the Rwandan post and international airmail.

All we can do is hope it gets there in time, and they are allowed and counted.

I had a sudden fearful image of us being used as a test case in court as the Repubs try to invalidate our, and many other, votes. Not the sort of publicity I might seek.

Fingers crossed there is a blue wave in PA that will render our votes surplus to requirements.

Check here (fill out the online "form" for a database search) to see the ballot status - https://www.pavoterservices.pa.gov/Pages/BallotTracking.aspx

I know in the past, the state was auto-generating emails to provide ballot status and the last one that I saw about the ballot being "ready" to send, had a different, more "friendly" sender name that changed from "ra-voterregstatcert@state.pa.us" to "My Ballot PA Dept of State (myballot@pa.gov). So it could be that whole feature was contracted-out (I expect it was), and this is what a new vendor has come up with. I just confirmed that the state itself has transitioned their website from the older "state.pa.us" to "pa.gov".

I know in the past, the old account status email would indicate that the ballot "had been received and timely recorded" (as the County status) and then had the reminder that I could no longer vote in person (meaning I was done).

I haven't seen one of those types of emails although the above-linked site has my status of the County (Philly) having received the ballot, and I check daily to make sure that I don't have any errors on the envelope (the city publishes a list each day for those ballots needing correction). I also know that the City Commissioners (who handle elections) changed this year and it's possible they are doing it a bit differently (although they used the "old way" during the primary).

I get the message "Traffic has been blocked - Please click here for additional voter information" with a link to the main https://www.pa.gov/en/agencies/vote.html page. That link works oddly enough so they are blocking international (or Rwandan) access only to the tracking page.

I will have to dust off my VPN and see if I can remember how to work it.

Either way thanks for the link. If I can get it working, it will help relieve som of our uncertianty.

Hope you can get in at some point to be able to check!!!