Whether you vote by mail...
"I always vote by mail 'cause it's easier," said voter Delaney Satz.
Or the day of...
"You never know if something might change," said voter Carol Smaniotto.
Your ballot will eventually end up at an elections office. In Santa Barbara County, Chief Deputy Registrar of Voters Michael Daly says they’re expecting an 80% voter turnout.
"We have 244,000 registered voters so we are expecting north of 200,000 ballots coming in," Daly said.
He says ballot security is a top concern, with two people always being present.
"Once the ballots come in there, there's the whole chain of custody process that brings them through to be processed in our vote-by-mail room," Daly explained.
Before counting the votes, ballots are sorted through an Angelus machine which takes a photo of your signature.
"Then each ballot goes through a signature verification process to make sure that that's the voter that voted it," Daly said.
Signatures are verified by both people and machines. The next stop is the tabulator machine, counting how many ballots have come in.
"Nothing's hooked up to the internet. It's all internal, secure, firewalled infrastructure," Daly said.
For ballots that have discrepancies or are severely damaged, those must go through the adjudication process where someone with the Elections Office determines the voter's intent.
"The adjudication process is all public. People can come and watch it on the screens on election night," Daly said.
If you live in Santa Barbara County, you can visit countyofsb.org to find your nearest polling place.
