ROCHESTER, N.Y. — How safe and secure is your ballot? That’s a question some people are asking as they vote in person, mail it, or leave it in a drop box.

What You Need To Know

  • Elections officials discuss keeping your ballot safe and secure

  • Ballot drop boxes are not left unattended

  • Across New York state, it is required that all county boards retain all paper ballots

“We have a really good relationship we've developed over the last couple of years with local law enforcement,” said Republican Monroe County Board of Elections Commissioner Lisa Nicolay.

Counties in New York state, like Monroe County, keep their ballot drop boxes close to the vest. They are not left unattended in public places.

It's unlike in some other areas of the country, like the Pacific Northwest, where two fires destroyed hundreds of ballots in recent days.

“From what I saw of that, the lighting on fire, is because they have collection ballot boxes out in the public, like a mailbox," Nicolay said. "We don't do that here. We don't have them. We have them at locations like right here. It's an early voting location. So, you'll see there's a red, white and blue box, flag on it. That's the absentee box. It is sealed. It does get emptied every night and those ballots get brought back just like the voted ballots from the machines that day."

She explains the chain of custody for the ballots for processing.

“There’s always both parties available and watching and keeping an eye on each other," Nicolay said. "Doors open [and] people doing them at their desks. But right next to them is the opposite party. So, they're never alone. So they can't be tampered with.”

Nicolay says the ballots are locked up when the processing is complete.

“[It is a] bipartisan lock," she said. "You have to have a Democrat key and a Republican key to get at them. The chain of custody is always there. We always know where every one of them is and where they are in the process.”

Should there be some kind of breach or tampering, the BOE has back-up plans.

“We also not just have the paper ones, but we also have them electronically," Nicolay said. "They're scanned and there's an image of them. So, we have those same three or four different places. So, God forbid that that would happen in our possession of the ballots like that fire thing. We do have electronic copies so we can recreate them, and we would never not have people's votes."

And law enforcement will be onsite when ballots are transferred from polling places to the county Board of Elections headquarters on Election Night.

“Then we have an RPD officer ready to be stationed here at this location while we collect ballots at night," Nicolay said. "And we have a sheriff because it's their jurisdiction at our other location. And they will be assigned to us all night just to keep an eye on people returning ballots and making sure that, you know, everything's copasetic and only Board of Elections people are there. And [that] it's all going to be safe and secure and locked up. And we're doing a lot of preparation to make sure that that's executed well."

Across the state, it is required that all county boards retain all paper ballots cast or produce and retain a voter-verified permanent paper record of each ballot as added security.