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I can only really speak on my experience with San Francisco, where they have since started to do recounts on half the local elections. I don't know if it was in part due to my complaint or what, but they have started making a big deal about counting absentees, and how drastically different the vote counts are turning out. What's still implied, and what the State told me was that most elections offices only bother to count the absentees if the election is close...meaning they don't do it until after the polls have closed. It's my understanding that it's up to the local office's discretion on how they handle them.

I went to a Bay Area politics insider message board and posted to see if there were others having the same problem, and got accused of voter fraud. So even though the State allows what's called "permanent absentees" there is a line of thinking that this is somehow illegal, and people like me (who own property and keep a residence there) should serve jail time for it.

Another story I can share - about two years ago, the elections committee there asked to use an Irish Bar in a building my family owns, as a voter location. Not the library, post office, banks, or various community centers in the area, they picked a dive bar with an alley entrance. The electronic ballot boxes were dropped off the night before, left outside the door until the next day - and the voting was proctored by a couple voulenteers from the neighborhood with photocopy lists of names they were crossing off with pencil. There were several ballot boxes they never put out, that were just hanging out. Scary shit!

The ballots do have a receipt, and you can inquire if your vote was counted - but I couldn't find what the hell I did with mine.