Process of pulling ballots critical to final ballot accounting

June 17, 2016 - This post focuses on just one aspect of the extreme level of detail required after every election. We are currently in the process of "pulling" rejected ballots. A rejected ballot occurs for a couple of reasons - for instance, during the scanning process the second page of a two-page ballot is missing (they can become separated during the ballot preparation process or voters may mail in the second page if they forgot to send it initially). We must search for every missing second page to ensure the entire ballot is counted. In addition, if our scanners cannot read the barcode on a ballot (which is required to orient the ballot) then it will "reject" it - we must find every one of these "rejects" in order to scan them in and tally the votes.