You received your ballot in the mail, voted and returned it? Now what?

Did you know that if you are worried about the receipt of your completed ballot, you can track your ballot? Was it received? Did it get lost? Was it counted? All valid questions to concerned voters. Maricopa County is offering peace of mind with a resource to ease worries of voter.

In Arizona, it is estimated that up to 90% of voters will have cast their vote their ballot early. There are two ways voters can return their ballots, by mail or physically going to a location and dropping their ballot in a collection box. Election officials have worked to make the voting process as transparent as possible. At the time of the county receiving your ballot, there are many checks and balances.

The elections department has set up a method to trace ballots using a unique barcode that is printed on the outside of each returned ballot.

The first step in the ballot verification process is employees will make sure the envelope has the voter’s valid signature on it. After the signature has been verified, a two member bipartisan team of differing parties will sit together and remove your ballot from the envelope. The ballot is then fed into the voter tabulation machine where the votes are counted.

Throughout any part of the process, voters can check on the status of your ballot by visiting the site: beballotready.vote. This site will detail when the ballot was originally mailed out to the voter,  when the returned ballot was received, if the signature has been verified, and will even note if officials need to ask any questions to finalize the ballot count.

In addition, voters can sign up to receive text messages as your ballot goes through the entire system. Text the word “JOIN” to 628683 to sign up for text notifications.

Elections officials are recommending returning your early ballot in the mail by Nov. 1. Voters can also drop off your ballot until 7 p.m. on election night.