Canvassing Process
The local board of canvassers oversees the canvass process. A bi-partisan team of two - called “canvassing teams” - review ballots and the envelopes with the ballots inside. These teams are usually made up of employees of the local boards and temporary staff members and will be of different political parties.
Each team receives a batch of ballots. The team verifies that each mail-in ballot in the batch was timely mailed and received and the voter signed the oath. If it is timely and the voter signed the oath, the team will open the envelope and remove the ballot. The team reviews each ballot to ensure that it can be read by the scanner (e.g., the ballot is not torn, nothing is spilled on it) and the voter’s intent is clear.
If the voter’s intent is not clear, the ballot will be referred to the local board. The local board will follow regulations that define what a valid vote is and what a valid write-in vote is (general election only) and may use SBE’s manual that explains the regulations and has images of acceptable and unacceptable marks.
Readable ballots are transferred to individuals feeding ballots into the scanner or to the local board, and unreadable ballots are referred to the local board or to a team that will create an identically marked ballot that can be read by the scanner.
The process of creating an identical ballot is called “ballot duplication.” A team of two individuals have two ballots - the ballot returned by the voter and a blank ballot with the same contests. The team makes the same selections on the blank ballot that the voter made on the ballot the voter returned. The team members verify each other’s work. Examples of ballots that need to be duplicated include web delivered ballots, federal contest only ballots and ballots that cannot be read by the scanner.
During the canvass, a member of the local board will make a motion to either accept one or more ballots or reject one or more ballots. If there is a motion to reject a ballot, the vote must be unanimous. If the vote on a motion to reject one or more ballots is not unanimous, the local board must count the ballot or vote.
