BEAUMONT, Texas — Piece-by-piece, a drive-thru drop off location is being built outside the Jefferson County elections barn.
It'll be a key piece of the process, as voting equipment arrives on election night.
Jefferson County Clerk Carolyn Guidry spoke to 12News about how and when ballots are counted after you cast your vote. She said ballots started being processed two weeks ago.
"By processing, what I mean is that the early voting ballot board and verification committee will take the mail ballots and look at the application versus the ballot itself with the signatures to make sure the signatures match," Guidry said.
In Texas, mail-in voters are not notified if their ballot is rejected.
In Jefferson County, once the approved ballots are scanned into a machine, they will be counted on election day.
"But right now, it's just residing there in the database," Guidry said.
In Jefferson County, if you voted in person, here's what happens after you click 'submit' on your ballot.
Your vote is registered on a memory card. That memory card will be dropped off at the Jefferson County elections barn on Viterbo Rd.
Instead of the election judges bringing the equipment inside, drop off will be contactless this year.
"So, because of COVID, we're trying to keep everybody safe, distanced and spread out. So we found that to be a better way, because we did use it during the run-off election and it worked really well. They never had to get out of their cars. We'll have security out here that will help them to drive-thru," Guidry said.
Guidry said she expected the drive-thru drop off to speed up the process, not slow it down.
She said tabulation of early voting and mail-in voting will begin at 6 p.m. on election day.
All counties must notify the secretary of state's office of their results. Workers there manually enter vote totals into the state's election interface.
Polls will be open until 7 p.m. on Tuesday.
