I think there is another issue but I'm not sure how it works

in Illinois.

During the last Presidential election, my wife and I voted by mail in Florida.

In all previous elections I have voted in person. To my way of thinking, there are two pieces to voting. First, I tell the volunteers my name. They check to see (a) if there is such a registered voter and (b) if he has already voted. If that test is passsed, they look at my ID. If that looks OK they give me a ballot.

That's piece number one.

I take the ballot over to a booth, fill in the circles I want and put it down the slot where it joins the other ballots.

That's piece number two.

When the polls close, they feed the ballots into the machines and can get a count for that precinct pretty quickly.

For a mail in ballot, I fill in my name and signature on a form which accompanies my filled out ballot. I mailed this in a couple of weeks before election day.

When they receive my envelope, the election officials tear open the envelope and check piece number one at that time. If they decide that there is such a guy, and that he has not yet voted and my signature matches, they place the ballot on a stack which will not be counted until election night.

My impression is that states such as Pennsylvania don't even open the envelopes until the polls close. This is why, in 2020, when there were an extradinary volume of mail ins, the process of counting them was agonzingly slow and Trump yelled as loudly as he could to stop the count while he was ahead and yelled afterward that there was something wrong with mail in ballots.

On the other hand, these votes were counted more quickly in Florida (Florida runs an election right???) because they had completed a signifcant proportion of piece number one before election night.

It may be that the procedure in Illinois is fraudulent. It might also be that it is just slow and mail in voters have a different mix than in person voters.