As voting gets underway in the November general election, millions of ballots will make their way to Los Angeles County’s new ballot processing center in the city of Industry. The Steampunk-themed building that once housed local landmark Fry’s Electronics has been stripped of its giant gears and transformed into an inconspicuous warehouse. Inside, a team of employees and ballot processing machines are working tirelessly to ensure each vote is counted accurately. The entire process involves multiple levels of voter identification, a scan of each penned-in bubble and multiple human inspections of ballots that cannot be read by the machines. The state of California counts every ballot postmarked by Election Day, which means this process will continue after Nov. 5 as votes roll in.
In 2020, about two-thirds of the voting-
eligible population turned out for the election across the United States, according to the Pew Research Center. This was the highest rate for a national election since 1900. Yet the same year, many voters believed the election was a fraud. This may be due to the spread of misinformation on social media, but it also has to do with a lack of education regarding the complex ballot-counting process. To combat concerns that the ongoing presidential election can be rigged, the L.A. County Registrar of Voters hosted tours of the new processing center before voting began and walked invitees through the entire process using a sample ballot.
