My Dad was an election judge some time back.
He told me of a story where a truck delivering ballots took a corner too sharp and dumped a bunch of ballot boxes all over the street. The ballots spilled out all over the street and many were lost. Nothing was mentioned to the public about the incident.
Also, he told me that he learned that they don't count the absentee ballots unless an election is close. Don't know how true this is.
Too bad there isn't more accountability. People assume that the election process is fair. It may be totally screwed up.
Probably true. Every state does it slightly differently. Ours counts the absentee ballots that can be processed automatically (optical readers), but isn't very diligent about counting the ones that need hand processing unless the vote is close. It's expensive to process those, and if it won't make a difference, there's no reason to bother.
This whole absentee business is such that I'd like to see a federal law that says you spend 10 years in prison if you or country-appointed member refuses to count a single absentee vote.