I live in Oakland County and signed up to count absentee votes on election day. I did this for the August primary too.
Municipalities collect ballots, verify the signatures on the outside envelope and sort them by precinct. The ballots are then locked away in storage until election day. On election day the ballots are delivered to the precincts to be counted. Counting can begin as soon as the polls open (7 am).
In Oakland County, cities and towns can sign up to have their absentee ballots counted at a central location supervised by the county election board and bipartisan poll watchers. This is where I worked in August.
We worked in 4 rooms. Each of the 4 rooms had 5 big tables. Each table had 2 people opening ballots, 2 people unfolding ballots, and one person flattening ballots. I was an opener. I opened the envelope, matched the number on the ballot to the number on the outside envelope. If the numbers did not match, I alerted election board personnel. If the ballot did not have a secrecy sleeve, I was instructed to insert the ballot into an extra sleeve (provided) before passing the ballot to the unfolder. The unfolder removed the ballot from the secrecy sleeve and detached the perforated stub from the ballot. They then passed the ballot to the flattener. The flattener bundled the ballots into stacks of 25 and walked them to the scanner, the same machine used in precincts.
We counted one precinct at a time. On August 4 we counted 50,000 absentee ballots. Our table counted approximately 2,500. We were done before 11:00 a.m.
There were several backstops to this process to ensure fairness and transparency. 1) it was bipartisan. When we sign up to work we disclose our political affiliation and it is shown clearly on our name tags. Tables were mixed. 2) overseas ballots had to be manually filled in. This work was done at a table staffed with one Democrat and one Republican. 3) ballot irregularities were handled at stations staffed with one Republican and one Democrat. 4) ballot counters were instructed to leave any internet connected devices in their cars or at home. No one was permitted to go to their car, and if anyone did, they were sent home. 4) law enforcement was on hand in case of fraud, theft or ballot tampering. I witnessed none. Because we had a lot of down time after we were done counting I had the opportunity to talk to Republicans, all of whom were quite moderate. We carefully avoided talk about the current president but I thought it was interesting.
On November 3 I am 100% certain there will be party attorneys on hand to watch the ballot counting process. We are expecting at least double the number of ballots.
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