DALLAS — With more and more Texans using mail-in voting options, many questions can come up about the process and what happens after you send off your ballot.
With early voting beginning on Feb. 14 for the March 1 primary election in Texas, questions are arising once again.
If you decide to use a mail-in ballot, there are ways of checking your eligibility and even tracking your ballot once you mail it in.
But what happens once the ballot is received?
Collin County elections administrator Bruce Sherbert says there are steps taken to ensure a mail-in or absentee ballot is counted.
“There’s a lot of checks and balances you don’t really realize behind the scenes,” Sherbert said.
“The ballot board has members of both parties on it that will verify the signatures on the application and the return ballot carrier envelope containing the ballot,” he added.
Sherbet says ballot boards do reject mail-in ballots if they can’t verify both signatures came from the same person – but it is exceedingly rare.
“They do everything possible to make sure that it’s approved,” he said.
Once those two signatures are approved, the mail-in ballot is then counted on election day, which is March 1 for this upcoming primary.
Sherbert said the bipartisan ballot board handles more than just mail-in ballots but works to ensure the integrity of the day-of in-person vote, too.
“They also check the audits from all the locations to make sure everything is being accounted for,” Sherbet said.
Early voting begins on Monday, Feb. 14 and ends on Friday, Feb. 25.