I volunteered as a "poll observer" in my state, which is largely considered purple. Area is suburbs just outside of a major metro area.

I spent a couple of days just sitting and watching - not very exciting, but actually interesting at the same time. Speaking as a voter, I'm reassured that the procedures used in my county are actually very good and appear to leave very little room for fraud on the part of staff or voters.

When voters arrive, they must show ID - either a driver's license or other state-issued ID.

A poll worker helps them check in through the computer system, which scans their ID and shows their name & address. Once the voter signs their name on the screen with a fingertip, they are sent to the tables at the back of the long room where the printers are set up.

After walking past the many voting booths - just tall tables with plastic screens set up around the tops of each table - the voter arrives at the printer table. By the time they get there, one of the poll workers is pulling a ballot and an envelope, both with that voter's name & address, off of the printer.

Voter is given a black ballpoint pen and shown how to fill out the ballot. Any questions are answered and voter is sent to one of the booths in the middle of the room.

Once the ballot is filled out, the voter puts it in the envelope and takes it back out into the hallway where the big rolling ballot bin is waiting. The poll worker there checks the signature on the envelope, helps the voter seal the envelope, and the voter drops it into the bin. And they're done.

Also, many, many voters were stopping by to drop off ballots that they'd received in the mail, putting them into the same bin.

If the voter gets partway through filling out the ballot but makes an error, or changes their mind, they can start over with the computers and have another ballot printed out. The poll worker will "spoil" the old ballot - write over it so it will not be counted - and that ballot and its envelope go into a separate plastic bag on a table behind the printers.

They can handle virtually any sort of handicapped voter. One person came in who was entirely blind, but there is a device there that will read the ballot to them and allow for touch voting. (I wanted to look closer but didn't want to bother the voter.)

Tables were set aside where voters could sit down, or roll up in a wheelchair, if they wished.

About midday, two people arrived from the counting center downtown and collected all the ballots from the bin. They placed them into a couple of large red plastic boxes that were then tied shut with zip-loc ties, so they could not be secretly re-opened and closed again unless you had the exact same zip-loc ties to re-close them with. Not foolproof, but still good. They also take the "spoiled" votes with them.

Tech support dropped in a few times a day to make sure things were good. They seemed to be constantly making the rounds of polling centers and some were on call in case of any tech issues.

Overall it was a very smooth process that left little room for any funny business. I was very glad to see that there are no blank ballots anywhere; ballots are printed out one at a time as voters sign in, and each one has that voter's name and address on it.

There is also supposed to be a way that you can go online, a few days after voting, and see that your vote was counted. I haven't looked for that yet.

About the only drawback I could see was that if the system went down, there was no backup. As I mentioned, there are no blank ballots anywhere. The computers did go down for a short time on one day, and if the workers had not been able to simply reboot them they would have had to wait for tech support with no voting happening.

One strange thing was that I saw maybe three people wearing some political gear - hats and a mask - but the poll workers said nothing about it. I still think the old rule of "no political gear in the polling place" is a good one, especially with as crazy as some folks are right about now, but it wasn't up to me.

So, at least in my county, I was actually reassured by what I saw. Hope things are at least that good in yours. I'm supposed to go back again on Monday for another day of observing on the day before the election, so we'll see how it goes then!