You keep a receipt from your ballot.  They are numbered in groups of 50.  You can see when that batch has been counted. The same thing happened in my voting precinct!  With fires, etc, the week since election has been chaotic, so I haven't consolidated polling place thoughts. Less happened in our area than others because our location had the only provisional ballots leftover in our district!  We did have a sign in sheet for provisional ballots.  The DMV line was used in everyone that said they'd never voted by mail or requested it, so maybe they prepped our "Inspector" with that prior to election day. Mail in ballots went into a heavy duty sealed yellow bag with a slot.  Provisional were put in pink envelopes into pink heavy duty sealed bag with a slot.