After making their voices heard with a ballot, a voter may wonder what process occurs to tally their votes.

DeKalb City Clerk Steve Kapitan said the city has been using optical scan readers to count the ballots since before the 2000 election. The optical reader is similar to machines used to read scantron test forms.

“You get a paper ballot and then you fill the ovals for who you want to vote for and then you scan it,” Kapitan said.

These optical reader machines were not cheap, so the city decided to combine voting precincts, Kapitan said. The city has one reader machine for four precincts.

“You come out of the booth and you slide it into the scanner where the reader reads the ballot,” Kapitan said. “There’s a box under the machine that collects the ballots so there’s a paper trail.”

DeKalb County Clerk Sharon Holmes said they were done counting votes earlier this year than any year before. Holmes said there is a memory card in each optical reader machine.

“As that ballot is scanned it’s counting the votes,” Holmes said. “At the end of the night that memory card comes back [to the County Clerk’s office] and it’s uploaded into the main computer and that accumulates the votes. You can see the accumulated total on screen.”

Votes are then recorded and posted on the county’s website as the votes come in from different precincts.