It can be as simple as signing up for text messages. Here’s one I got recently in California, where every voter gets sent a ballot in the mail: “Your ballot for the upcoming Nov. 8, 2022, General Election has been mailed to you. If you haven’t received your ballot within 7 business days, please contact us.”

For once, there’s a new use for technology that might build confidence in our democracy, rather than tear it down.

There are a few important things to know:

• Ballot-tracking tech lets you see that your ballot is on its way to you and whether it has safely arrived once you’ve mailed it in.
• You’ll still need to mail or drop off your ballot — you can’t use it to vote online.
• Who you vote for remains totally private. Using this tech doesn’t give the government a new way to track you.
• In most places, you’ll need to take action to get ballot tracking, either by logging into a website or signing up for alerts. This is probably separate from registering to vote or requesting an absentee ballot.

Ballot tracking won’t end all our debates about election fraud and making voting accessible to everyone. But the transparency helps us hold local election officials and the U.S.Postal Service accountable. And it can take away some of our own uncertainty about voting by mail.

That includes keeping you out of trouble. “Because you’ll have already received information that your ballot counted, you don’t have to jeopardize yourself committing a felony by voting again,” said Tammy Patrick, senior adviser to the elections team at the nonprofit Democracy Fund.

Are you ready to vote? This toolkit will help you prepare for the midterms.

How does this work? Where can you get it? And what does it mean for your privacy?

Here’s a citizen’s guide based on my conversations with election officials and the companies that make the common ballot-tracking tech.