How are votes counted? Inside Washington’s vote-processing facility

District of Columbia will handle hundreds of thousands of ballots

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In the US capital of Washington, election workers and volunteers are putting in extra hours to make sure every ballot submitted is accurately counted amid heightened election fraud rhetoric.

Elections, and in particular presidential elections, take on special meaning in the District of Columbia, where the winner of the 2024 US presidential race will reside for the next four years.

The National had the opportunity to go inside the DC Board of Elections headquarters to see the vote-processing rooms, people and machines that are responsible for tabulating hundreds of thousands of votes.

“I think elections here and across the US are safe and secure,” said Sarah Winn Graham, DC Board of Elections director of communications, adding that already more than 100,000 early votes submitted by mail, drop boxes and election centres had been cast and processed.

Envelopes for early mail-in ballots are inspected for authenticity inside Washington's Board of Elections headquarters. Cody Combs / The National

"It’s important that we work really hard and work long hours to ensure people’s right to vote is protected and every vote is accurately counted."

Inside the facility – located right down the street from where the city's baseball team, the Nationals, play – all the envelopes containing ballots are run through a special machine that checks for authenticity and irregularities.

After the ballots make their way through that machine, a team in a separate room opens the ballots and checks for proper signatures.

Finally, the ballots themselves are entered into another machine, where the votes are technically counted, but encrypted until election day when the results are revealed and combined with the votes cast on November 5.

“This is an important part of our democratic process,” said Ms Graham, pointing to how many other parts of the world look specifically at Washington to see how elections are conducted.

Hundreds of thousands of ballots will be processed using machines like this inside the Washington Board of Elections. Cody Combs / The National

This year, with tension nearing a crescendo, Ms Graham noted that the DC Board of Elections is on high alert.

“We’re on high alert for the potential impact of that, we have workers and volunteers and we’re always concerned about their safety,” she said.

Washington has more than 400,000 registered voters. As of Thursday, more than 110,000 votes had already been processed.

For election day, Ms Graham is expecting a high turnout – but she said that Washington can handle it.

“We’re anticipating long lines and long hours,” she said.