THREAD: As of Nov. 2, nearly 2.9 million mail-in ballots had been returned in Los Angeles County, or 50% of those mailed out. This is how the county is processing them https://trib.al/YMQuiNR 

Step 1 is inspection of incoming ballot envelopes. Envelopes collected from the U.S. Postal Service, or from drop boxes, are sorted by postmark and inspected for the required signature and any signs of tampering http://trib.al/YMQuiNR 

In the second step, workers run the ballot envelopes through automated scanners to validate that the signature on the envelope matches the signature of the voter on file with the county http://trib.al/YMQuiNR 

Step 3 is only for ballot envelopes that failed the automated signature validation. Workers review signatures on these envelopes. If the signature still can’t be verified, election officials will contact the voter to get a signature verification statement http://trib.al/YMQuiNR 

The fourth step is “ballot extraction”—ballot envelopes are sliced open so workers can take out the ballots http://trib.al/YMQuiNR 

In the fifth step, teams of two workers “remake” ballots that have readability problems or that voters made a mistake on and tried to correct—as long as the intention of the voter can be understood—so that the ballots can be read by tabulation machines http://trib.al/YMQuiNR 

Finally, ballots are placed in tally boxes equipped with tamper-evident seals http://trib.al/YMQuiNR 

For more election coverage, head here https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-03/polls-open-with-almost-100-million-votes-cast-election-update?srnd=premium&sref=xuVirdpv