PITTSBURGH —
Allegheny County election officials are implementing detailed security measures for handling mail-in and in-person ballots as voters prepare for election day.
One of the 13 designated locations for mail-in ballot drop-offs is the election office downtown, where parking is blocked off, so voter can pull over and securely deliver their ballots inside the office.
Dave Voye, division manager of elections for Allegheny County, explained the process for handling ballots once polls close on election night.
“The judge of elections will take the voted ballots in sealed, locked canvas bags and the scanner memory stick to a regional reporting center. Then the results are read to the county elections warehouse by phone or internet, where they will be displayed on election night,” Voye said.
Inside the county elections warehouse, work begins at 7 a.m. on election day, 13 hours before polls close.
“At 7:00 the morning of the election, when we’re all sworn in for the pre-canvass, the ballots will be brought out, and I believe we’ll have approximately 120 county employees there. What we’ll do is we’ll go through each ballot again, make sure it’s signed and dated correctly. It’s a pre-canvass,” Voye said. “Once that is done, we’ll run them all through large letter openers, which we can put a tray of mail in at a time. It’ll open all of the outer envelopes—the declaration envelopes that you sign. Once that process is done, the secrecy envelopes inside, we will open those, open the ballots, unfold them, and start to count them.”
Voye noted that the secrecy envelopes ensure voter privacy.
“What that does is — the two envelopes, once you remove from the outer envelope you sign, your ballot cannot be traced back to you. It maintains secrecy,” he said.
While mail-in ballots are being processed at the warehouse, voters casting their ballots in person may notice monitors from the Department of Justice outside polling locations.
“These folks will be outside your polling locations. They’re there to observe. They’re not permitted inside the locations. They’re not allowed to interfere,” Voye said. He added, “We are supposed to get a list of, like, how many monitors they’re going to have in this county. I haven’t received that information yet. I mean, these are typically lawyers, are going to be in khakis and probably a polo shirt standing outside. It’s not nothing to be concerned about.”
Once polls close at 8 p.m., ballots from voting machines will be extracted, placed into locked and sealed canvas bags, and delivered to one of eight regional reporting centers.
“These centers are strategically located around the county where, depending on where you reside or where the judge is working, is where they’ll return those supplies. There, the results are read in via phone, via the internet, to our warehouse, where they’re displayed for election night,” Voye said.
The election warehouse is under constant surveillance and staffed by employees who take an oath to ensure the integrity of the process.
“There’s a chain of custody. We know how many ballots were sent to each polling place. We know how many were counted. We know how many were scanned,” Voye said.
Voye also gave us insight into the safety mechanisms in place to guarantee accuracy.
“The voted ballots are returned election night, and the memory sticks out of the scanners are returned election night. So if something would happen, we could read the other stick, or we could scan the ballots,” he said.
For voters who have yet to return their mail-in ballots, there are 13 drop-off locations across Allegheny County, including the downtown site on Ross Street.
These locations are open over the weekend and on Monday. The Ross Street location is also open for ballot drop off on election day.