ROANOKE, Va. – With more people voting by mail than ever before, 10 News is working for you to find out how your votes are being counted.
In Roanoke City, there are four teams of people processing hundreds of mail-in ballots every day. They get daily deliveries from the post office, then start a labor-intensive process.
When workers open the envelopes, they must verify you’ve filled out all your personal information correctly and feed the ballot into a scanner.
The votes are recorded once put into the scanner, but won’t be tabulated until polls close on election night.
“That helps us because on election night, we will be able to produce official results very quickly. If we had to process 20,000 ballots Election Day, that would take us days,” said Andrew Cochran, Roanoke’s director of elections and general registrar.
Roanoke City has sent out about 10,500 mail-in ballots and has already received 2,500 back.
If you haven’t applied to vote by mail yet, you have until Oct. 23 to do so. Click here to apply.