Nearly 7% of all New Jersey voters are using Track My Ballot tool

More than 400,000 New Jerseyans have signed up to track their own ballots for a general election being conducted entirely through vote-by-mail ballots, according to the state Division of Elections.

The tracking option allows voters to follow their ballots after mailing them or using secure ballot drop boxes to check and confirm that their vote has been received by their county Board of Elections.

The 401,544 voters who have Track My Ballot accounts represents 6.6% of the state’s total voters.

Election officials told the New Jersey Globe on Tuesday that 299,826 of the accounts were set up since August 14 and that 86% of those new accounts have been created over the last 20 days.

The Division of Elections says it could take up to one week for ballots deposited in drop boxes to show up as received and as many as two weeks if voters used the U.S. Postal Service.

The state says that the amount of time it takes for  the Track My Ballot tool to reflect updates may vary from county to county.

Voters can sign up for Track My Ballot at https://www.nj.gov/state/elections/vote-track-my-ballot.shtml.

Here’s a shortcut that will make it easier to sign up for Track My Ballot: go to voter search — https://voter.svrs.nj.gov/registration-check — and get tour Voter ID number and then use that number instead of your drivers license or social security number.

And this is important: when you get your Voter ID, know that it begins with a letter, followed by nine digits — watch the O’s and the I’s, which are not zeros or ones.