As Santa Barbara County voters headed to the polls, the County Elections Office offered a behind-the-scenes look at the ballot-counting process.

On Tuesday, the Santa Barbara County Elections Office hosted members of the Civil Grand Jury at its 4440-A Calle Real office to answer questions about the election process and how it handles ballots.

The grand jury is an independent division of the Superior Court that investigates or reviews government agencies, cities and districts throughout Santa Barbara County. 

Jurors were invited to tour the office where mail-in ballots are opened, sorted, scanned and then sealed away in storage.

An estimated 80,000 ballots were turned in as of Monday, which accounted for 35% of the registered voters in Santa Barbara County. That number was estimated to have reached more than 90,000 as of Tuesday morning.

Gwen Rigby, the foreperson of the grand jury, said she felt assured after the tour. She was impressed by the process and the machines used to organize and scan the ballots.

“There’s just no doubt that all these machines are doing their job, and if there’s any sort of glitch, they will follow through and check up on it,” she said. “It gave me confidence that our ballots are well taken care of.”

She added that she wants people to feel assured in the process.

“Even though you’re in a pile of 20,000 other ballots, your vote counts,” Rigby said. “Because if they see anything different, anything questionable, they will check it and recheck it to make sure that your vote is counted.”

When ballots arrive at the office, staff enter them into a machine that scans a barcode on each envelope and records them. The letters then go into a machine that opens the envelopes before staff open the ballots and flatten them.

Ballots are then counted in a different area, before being sealed in boxes and kept in storage. The elections office then stores the ballots for 22 months.

Staff will also review signatures on the ballots to make sure they match previous signatures. The office will keep past writing samples on file for comparison since signatures may change over time.

The grand jurors saw this process after meeting with Joe Holland, the county’s clerk-recorder-assessor-registrar of voters, who answered questions about the county’s process and security functions.

Holland, who lost his re-election bid in June and is retiring at the end of the year, was first elected in 2002 and has been with the county since 1984. He told the grand jurors that his first election was the recall race that elected Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor.

He explained that unlike other counties, Santa Barbara is a polling place county and does not use voting centers. Holland said he believes that is better for the voters.

“I don’t think you’re providing the voters every opportunity to vote like we do here,” he told the jurors.

Holland said the county has 67 polling places and 18 drop boxes.

Staff regularly assess the boxes to see whether they are being used, and boxes that do not receive many ballots may be closed.

Holland said drop boxes are checked every night and require two poll workers for pickup. Depending on the distance to the drop box and how often it is used, the county may decide it is too time-consuming or costly to continue operating, he said.

On Tuesday night, the office awaited paper ballots delivered from polling sites throughout the county. Poll workers collected the ballots and brought them back to the office after the polls officially closed.

After pickup, ballots were dropped off at a secure drop point at the elections office, where deputies from the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office escorted them to be counted.

Read election results coverage from Tuesday’s election here.