Five ways to make long elections lines shorter ~ Washington Post

[Retrograde]

5. Provisional ballot on election day

There is a process for casting a provisional ballot at one's polling place on election day if the mail-in ballot isn't received. As to whether my vote for Joe Blow is actually counted as a vote for Joe Blow - ultimately, the paper ballots are scanned in and counted electronically. I suppose that one could do a manual recount on all the paper ballots, but by that time they've all be separated from their envelopes (which contain the name and address of the voter). so the counters don't know who belongs to which ballot. The ballots are numbered, with the number also printed on a piece the voter tears off and keeps, so if I really, really wanted to track mine down (and could get a judge to agree, I suppose) I could find it.

At some point, every system comes down to trust that it will work the way it is supposed to for all voters. With mail-in ballots, it's always possible to "lose" some, or, as in the case last week in Oregon, for the election officials to fill in what they think is the correct vote.