DAUPHIN COUNTY, Pa (WHP) — CBS 21 News got an inside look of the Dauphin County Elections Office on Thursday, with less than three weeks to go until the midterm election.

“Our Dauphin County team is prepared,” Dauphin County Commissioner George P. Hartwick III said.

“We’re one of the only counties in central Pennsylvania and across the state that have consistently gotten the election results in by midnight on election day,” Election Board Chairman and Dauphin County Commissioner Mike Pries added.

The county says that’s been made possible by its nearly 1,200 volunteers on election day and equipment, like the Runbeck sorting machine and the Poll Pad, which are designed to eliminate human error.

“These electronic pollbooks, it’s kind of like it has the entire county’s database so it lets you know whether voters are in the right location,” Dauphin County Director of Elections Jerry Feaser explained. “Once they process, it spits out a ticket that tells them, ‘You go over that side of the room or you go to this side of the room,’ and then that’s where they then turn their ticket in. Their name gets entered into the numbered list of voters and they’re handed the appropriate ballot for that precinct. So, again, no ticket, no ballot.”

Soon, more than 300 scanners will head out to the over 150 polling locations in the county. However, the county has already sent out nearly 26,000 mail-in and absentee ballots with almost 16,000 ballots returned. Of those, there’s more than three times as many from registered Democrats than registered Republicans but none will be tabulated until election day.

“We start scanning the ballots in to the central tabulator,” Feaser continued. “The central tabulator is where the roads are actually counted.”

The county says the back-and-forth between rulings on whether or not to count undated mail-in ballots has made the job more difficult.

“We have a state law that says one thing, we have courts that rule in a totally different way and then we’ve got the Department of State that hands down edicts that seems to contradict,” Dauphin County Commissioner Chad Saylor added.

Feaser says the county plans to tabulate all correctly marked ballots on election day and then do a separate count of any undated ballots. He says the best way to eliminate confusion is by properly sealing and signing your mail-in ballot.

“Make sure that you put your ballot into the privacy envelope,” Feaser said. “Put the privacy envelope into the return envelope and before you drop it in the mail or bring it to us, sign and date where it says to.”

There’s also been some confusion created by third party groups, outside of the county, who have been offering forms to allow voters to apply for mail-in ballots using incorrect registration data. While they’re not the same as mail-in ballots, it has caused the county’s elections office to get more calls to clear the situation up.

“They’re mailing out applications addressed to people with wrong addresses,” Feaser said. “Some organizations are mismatching two different people in the same application with two different addresses, two different dates of birth and then we get the phone calls from people complaining and, you know, we’ve only mailed to those who have asked for things.”

Feaser says, while he’s sure the third parties aren’t trying to confuse things, it’s having that effect. He says it’s best for residents to request their ballots through the county.

In Dauphin County, those who drop off their ballots are being asked at the door: Did they put their ballot on the privacy envelope? Did they sign and date the back? If the answer is no, they’re sent back to finish their own ballot.

For Dauphin County residents who still want to request a mail-in ballot, Feaser recommends doing it soon – and returning it soon.

“We can get your application within 15 minutes of you hitting the submit button,” he explained. “Don’t wait to try and mail it in, don’t wait until Nov. 1. You’ll never get your ballot in time.”