Some of you are wondering where in the world your ballot ends up after you’ve dropped it in the mailbox.

Well!!

First, they find their way over to this building, the Multnomah County Elections Office. It’s on SE Morrison and 11th ave.

Here’s what the inside of the building looks like.

Here’s the guy in charge of Oregon elections, Secretary of State Bill Bradbury. On his left, none other than ex-Mercury writer Scott Moore, Bradbury’s Director of Communications.

In the back of the building, there’s a big warehouse area. The ballots arrive in locked crates in cars like these…

Then they go to this room where they are sorted by precinct.

After getting sorted, they go to a smaller adjacent room where three people scan the envelopes. The unopened ballots are now officially on record in the computer system.

Then, crates of envelopes are sent to this room where the security signatures are authenticated.

Then, the envelopes - still sealed - are sent down to the basement, where 50 or so seniors work in groups of four opening and sorting.

They pile all the ballots together and make sure each is in good enough condition to send upstairs to the voting machines.

After, ballot piles are sent to this room, where a handful of people are operating the voting machines. They pile 30 or 40 ballots at a time and the machine tallies the results.

No one is allowed to know the tally until 8pm, when Tim Scott, the Director of Elections for Multnomah County, will get the first reading.

As of 6pm, there is 51% turnout of registered voters in Multnomah County. That means about 200,000 people out of a possible 400,000 have turned in their ballots. Check here for updates.

Apparently, the highest voter turnout percentage for Oregon was 73% in the 1968 election, where Democratic voters picked Eugene McCarthy over Robert Kennedy.

Here are some other factoids from the Oregonian:

Spurred by the rivalry between Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, Oregon’s 866,700 registered Democrats could set a record for primary participation. As of Monday, 52 percent of Democrats had cast ballots, compared with 38 percent of 672,600 registered Republicans and only 19 percent of 482,495 unaffiliated and other voters.

In 1968, 72 percent of Oregon Democrats cast ballots in a hotly contested race between eventual winner Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy.

That was the year nearly 73 percent of all Oregon voters cast ballots in the primary, a record not threatened by today’s vote.