TL/DR
This is based upon my experience in the State of Utah, but most states should have similar procedures.
There's a lot of work that has to go in before vote-by-mail ballots can be counted.
1. Logged in as having been received. I've already verified on the State website that my ballot has been received by the County.
2. Signature on the affidavit envelope compared to the one on file in the State's database The ones on file come from when you get your driver's license. If you've ever voted provisionally, those signatures will be on file in the State's database. One time, we had to look at five different documents before we found one that matched the one on the affidavit envelope. BE CONSISTENT WITH HOW YOU SIGN YOUR NAME!
3. If the voter forgot to sign it, it can't be counted until the voter has been contacted. Hopefully they will reply in a timely manner. And hopefully their phone or email address are still current. Otherwise, letters have to be mailed and may not be received in time for the voter to take action.
4. The ballots are opened and the folded envelopes go in bins while the affidavit envelopes go in another. Remember, there are TENS OF THOUSANDS of voters. My city alone, when I was their election official, had 47,000 registered voters. The opening and separating of the ballots is often done in an assembly line fashion.
5. The voted ballots, now they are separated from the envelope that could identify them, can be opened and examined.
Why examined? Because voters do some interesting things to their ballot.
* Maybe they accidentally tore it when they removed the tag at the top of the ballot and now it won't feed properly into the reader.
* Maybe they didn't fill in the boxes correctly and the machine won't register the voted box.
* Maybe they realized they'd made a mistake but didn't want to bother contacting the county for a new one and WROTE THEIR INSTRUCTIONS ON THE BALLOT. The machine absolutely can't read it then. But, if the voter's instructions are clear, there will be a team of poll workers who can duplicate the ballot and they will all have to sign that they did it correctly.
And that's just to name a few things. What if the voter's intensions are clear on the ballot but the marks aren't large enough to be read by the machine? Did you know an election worker could use a highlighter over the box that will let the mark be read but will still allow anyone examining the ballot to see the original vote?
I know there are people who are worried the voting machines can be compromised and want ballots hand counted again. Well, when I first began working elections, ballots were counted by hand. It's an incredibly flawed system too, especially when the ballot is legal sized with both sides full of races and issues.
Sometimes a voter overvotes on a race, so none for that one race can be counted (because how can the worker or the machine know which ones the voter really wanted?) But I've heard of cases where the entire ballot was disqualified by human counters because of that one race.
All I'm saying is that no system is without flaws. No election is perfect, even without overt fraud (which has been documented to happen rarely).
THE BOTTOM LINE:
It's going to take time to process all the ballots in this hotly contested election cycle. Please be patient and kind.
