Deschutes County Clerk Steve Dennison shows the inside of a sorting machine that reads bar codes on ballot envelopes at the Deschutes County Clerk’s Office in October in Bend. 

We hope you are filling out your ballot or have already. Steve Dennison, Deschutes County’s clerk, gave us a couple of great tips for people wondering what becomes of their ballot after it is mailed or slid into a drop box.

You can check if your ballot was received by going to Oregon’s My Vote website, tinyurl.com/MyvoteOR. If the web is not to your liking, you can call Dennison’s office, 541-388-6547. You may get a voicemail, but our experience is they will call you back quickly. And if you want, you can even go down to their office in the county building at 1300 NW Wall St.

Start with the My Vote website, first. Results are available around the clock. There’s no waiting in line nor waiting for a call back. And the clerk’s office is busy during election time.

If your ballot has been challenged, or if you forgot to sign it, the clerk’s office will reach out to you. Voters have 21 days to respond.

Some voters are interested in absolute proof that their ballot was counted. Once a ballot is removed from the envelope and once the signature is verified, there is nothing tying that ballot back to a specific voter — that ensures every voter’s privacy. The ballot moves forward in the process to be counted.

“If there was a ballot in there, we counted it,” Dennison said.

Some people would like to see the counting process — be what are sometimes called “election observers.” The clerk’s office already had training for that and if you weren’t there, you missed it. But there may still be an opportunity. The two major parties often have observers attend on the night of general elections. So if you are still interested and are a member of one of those parties, reach out to those organizations. People who are members of smaller parties or unaffiliated can also be observers. Give Dennison’s office a call. His office doesn’t have a lot of space for observers, though he wants to be accommodating.

“When folks choose enough to care to watch, that’s great by me,” Dennison said.

Please vote.