OK, you qualified to vote, you've got your ballot, and you have filled it out. So, what happens to your vote next between the tabulator and Tallahassee? It’s all about accuracy and security. After filling out your ballot, either early, on election day, or by mail that ballot is fed into a scanner – a freestanding machine that tabulates your vote and then hangs onto your paper ballot. There are no copies and no receipt, but you can check your local office of elections website to confirm your ballot has been processed. “Florida doesn't issue receipts,” said Hillsborough Supervisor of Elections Craig Latimer. “In Florida, by the constitution and state law, it's a secret ballot. So, we're not going to give somebody a receipt that shows how they voted. Florida doesn't do that.” Ballots are counted to make sure they match the number of people who use each machine. Your vote is tabulated, along with anyone else who used that same scanner, and it’s then stored on an internal server. The scanners and tabulators are not connected to any other machine, computer, or the internet. That’s for security reasons. “The only way that we can get information off of that is with a thumb drive. And that's what we use to get the results election night. We use a thumb drive to get those off,” said Latimer. “We are able to put it into our system where we send it to the state, and we also publish it to a link on our website with the results as they're coming in.” At this point your ‘vote’ and your ‘ballot’ go their separate ways. While your tabulated vote data is double checked for accuracy and sent to the Secretary of State for certification, your paper ballot is securely held in storage – by law - for 22 months. First, in case there's a need for re-count by hand, then beyond that to meet state law. “Because it's public record,” said Latimer. “And we have to keep it for quite a bit of time.” There have been a couple of legal changes since the 2020 election. In the state of Florida, for example, people now have to re-register every election cycle for a vote-by-mail ballot.