- Election Day is less than a week away, raising concerns about ballot security.
- Incidents of ballot box burning in Oregon and Washington have destroyed hundreds of ballots.
- Lansing City Clerk Chris Swope emphasizes the security measures implemented, including daily emptying and surveillance of ballot boxes.
- Absentee ballots are taken to a secure room and counted, with results stored on flash drives for election day collection.
- Early in-person voters can observe the entire process, ensuring transparency and security.
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Two ballot boxes in Oregon and Washington that set on fire Monday. Authorities said as a result, hundreds of ballots were destroyed.
“It let's us know in many places that our votes are under attacked,” said Resident Nettavia Curry.
The burning ballot drop boxes have put one thing top of mind for Neighborhood voters - security of their ballots.
“Here we have cameras on all of our ballot boxes,” said Lansing City Clerk Chris Swope.
Swope said that security starts with the ballot boxes, where all of the absentee ballots are dropped off.
“We empty them every day, some of them we empty more than once day,” Swope said.
Once the absentee ballots are emptied, Swope said they're then taken to a secure room inside of the City's Election Office, which is equipped with surveillance cameras.
On Monday, Swipe said he and his team started counting the nearly 18,000 absentee ballots that were returned. The numbers are then put into a computer system, which are then downloaded on a flash drives that will be picked up on Election Day.
“The County Clerk Barb Byrum will send her staff here on Election Day and those flash drives are put into a secured box and they are picked up,” Swope said.
The process is similar for those early in person voting, except, before the information is downloaded on a flash drive, voters get to see the process all the way through.
“We check the voter in, get a ballot for them and they actually get to put their ballot into the tabulator themselves,” Swope said.
