BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) -- Kern County's Registrar of Voters has promised that ballots will be counted securely. A ballot goes through a five-step process in the elections division before it's counted.

Lines were out the door Monday, Nov. 4 with last-minute voter registrations and voters dropping off ballots. Where do those ballots go after they slide through the drop box slit? And how is your vote counted?

"Once the ballot comes in, the first thing it does is it goes through our sorter, one of our two sorters, and it captures a picture of the signature line on each ballot," said Aimee Espinoza, Kern County's Registrar of Voters.

Those signatures are checked with the one the division has on file, if it matches, then it goes to the extractor. "It cuts off the top of the envelope and the ballots actually extracted from the envelope."

If it does not match, a cure letter is sent to the voter and the division will try to contact them.

Before votes are counted, the ballot needs to have as few creases as possible to go through the machine, so they are manually flattened by division staff.

They wear gloves and masks to protect them from any harmful substances that could be on the ballot.

Ballots are put through these tabulator machines, that has it's own server and not connected to the internet, where the votes are counted and logged.

The machines went through an audit two weeks ago to ensure it counts the votes correctly, all the machines passed that audit, officials said.