General Discussion

Security of the ballot requires that once cast a ballot cannot be tracked back to the person who cast it. In all jurisdictions I know of, that is done by the ballot stub. It bears an identifying number that matches to the voter it was issued to. Once the stub is removed, the ballot is no longer individually identifiable. That happens just before the ballot is sent through the reader for in person voting, and when the mailed ballot (sealed in an envelope) is checked for things like identification and the envelopes are sent for batch processing. I don't remember the mechanics, but there is a similar mechanism to protect ballot secrecy with touch screen ballot stations.