LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — You mailed your ballot in weeks ago. Election Day has come and gone. County officials are preparing to certify the final vote.
So why does a state website still say your ballot was only "received," not that it was counted?
That's a question a viewer posed to Ask Steve, so I investigated to find the answer.
First, I checked with BallotTrax — the service that allows you to find out when your mail ballot has been sent, when it gets to the post office, and when it's received by the elections office.
When I looked up my own BallotTrax, I saw this on the webpage.
But that service is designed to track ballots and reassure voters who use the U.S. Postal Service that their ballot made it to the county elections headquarters for counting, not to keep track of a voter's history.
According to Steve Olsen, president of i3logix, the company behind BallotTrax, voters get a final text message once their mail-in ballot has been delivered to the elections office.
"Once the ballot is removed from the envelope which contains the voter ID information, it becomes anonymous per the [Nevada] constitution. It is tabulated along with all the other anonymous ballots and is technically 'counted' at that point," Olsen said in an email.
Next, I checked with the Nevada secretary of state's office, which does keep track of voter history, under the link "voter registration search." After entering the required information, I found out that my ballot had been received, but unlike previous elections, it did not yet say it was "counted."
I'd seen this message before; in fact, in the 2022 election cycle, the state's website listed my ballot as having been "received" for weeks after Election Day, until it was finally updated to say it was "counted."
So I decided to go right to the source, the Clark County Elections Department website, under the link for registered voter services. Once you enter your information on that site, you can use the drop-down menu to find things such as, "view my voting history," which showed that I had, in fact, voted in the 2024 general election.
On that same website, you can also use the menu to find "track my mail ballot." That link will lead you to a page that will tell you if your ballot has been counted or not. If so, the word "voted" will appear under "return status."
I reached out to both Clark County and state elections officials, trying to confirm that the state's website would eventually be updated with the same information that appears on the county's site but didn't immediately hear back because of the Veteran's Day holiday.
RELATED STORY | Need to cure your ballot? Here's how you can do that
If you have a question about elections, voting or politics, use the Ask Steve link on our website, and I will endeavor to answer your questions through email, online or on air.
