Election officials in at least four states have reported ballots being damaged or put at risk in the past week, renewing focus on the security of the U.S. voting system. Experts say the incidents are rare — and that they don’t pose any sort of threat to the 2024 elections’ integrity.
“It's important for people to know it's not widespread,” says Lisa Danetz, an adviser to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. “There's no need to panic.”
“Our systems are resilient,” Danetz tells NPR. “There are lots of layers of protection and there is a way for each person's vote — and only one vote — to be counted.”
Still, Danetz says, attempts to destroy ballots in drop boxes and mailboxes are “certainly concerning and a crime attacking our democracy.”
For any voter who wants to be sure their ballot is counted, she added, nearly every state has some form of online ballot tracking. The systems can send status updates and inform a voter if there’s a problem.
Here’s a guide to where things stand:
Ballot security questions pop up in 4 states
Problems have been reported in the past week in Arizona, Oregon, Washington state and Florida. Perhaps most alarmingly, "incendiary" devices were used on ballot drop boxes in the Pacific Northwest early Monday, damaging three ballots in Portland, Ore., and hundreds more in nearby Vancouver, Wash.
Fire also recently damaged ballots in a United States Postal Service mailbox in Phoenix, Ariz., where police say the confessed perpetrator says he wasn’t motivated by politics.
And on Tuesday, the elections agency in Florida's Miami-Dade County said an election worker was fired after a video posted online showed them driving off in a truck — and a sealed bin and bag of ballots falling onto the street, due to the vehicle’s rear door not being secured. Passersby then gave the items to the police. The ballots were already tallied from early voting, the agency said, calling it a case of human error.
You can track your ballot in 47 states and D.C.
Online ballot tracking for mailed-in or absentee ballots is available in every state except Illinois, Missouri and Wyoming — and even if there is no statewide system, some counties also provide the service.
In many cases, the services require you to enter your name, date of birth and zip code to let you look up your ballot’s status. Most sites will then send you texts or emails as your ballot progresses through the system.
If you’d like to track your ballot, a chart at the Vote.org website has links to each state's online services, along with links to county election agencies.
Voters using the systems can “track their ballot like an Amazon package via an intelligent mail barcode,” according to the National Vote at Home Institute, getting notifications when their ballot has arrived back at the elections office, and whether it’s been accepted.
One of the main tracking-service providers is BallotTrax, a division of i3logix Inc. based in Denver. The company says it’s active in 546 counties, across 26 states.
What are officials doing to keep ballots safe?
Conspiracy theories, misinformation and violent attacks have targeted the voting process in recent years, prompting governments to ramp up their protective and security efforts.
“You can see from the response to the recent incidents that there has been this important collaboration between election officials and law enforcement in the last few years,” Danetz says, noting that in many jurisdictions, the groups have been training together to practice how to respond to attempts to disrupt the democratic process.
In Maricopa County, Ariz., for instance, “precautions include [deploying] snipers, active-shooter drills and hourly monitoring of social media for threats and misinformation that could harm voters,” member station KJZZ reports.
The large and populous county will monitor more than 260 ballot drop boxes on Election Day. As in other places around the U.S., those drop boxes will have fire suppression canisters inside them, as a final layer of protection.
As a rule, Danetz says, drop boxes are securely mounted if they’re in an unstaffed location, often with some type of surveillance. They have tamper-proof seals, and when it’s time to remove ballots, she adds, that work is usually done by bipartisan teams.
What about ballots that are provisional — or "cured"?
A provisional ballot is what you use if you’re trying to vote in person, but you hit a problem. In many cases, voters need this option if a poll worker can’t find a match for their name on the voting rolls.
Or, in the 36 states that require voters to show an ID, the voter has forgotten or doesn’t have an adequate form of ID.
Voters in these situations can ensure their provisional ballot will count by doing things like sending an email with a copy of their license, or getting their registration confirmed.
A ballot that needs to be corrected, or “cured,” often has a signature problem — either the voter forgot to sign, or their signature doesn’t match the one on file.
At least 33 states and the District of Columbia have a ballot curing process, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. In general, officials are required to promptly inform the voter that their ballot is being rejected, giving the voter a chance to “cure” their ballot. Deadlines range from very tight — the closing time of polls on Election Day, for instance — to weeks after the election.
If you run into a problem voting, you can call an election hotline for help. The number — 866-OUR-VOTE, or 866-687-8683 — is staffed by the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
Mail-in ballot deadlines vary widely
For people returning mail-in ballots, it’s common for states to require a ballot’s envelope to be postmarked by Nov. 5 — but states differ widely on their “receive-by” deadline.
Many states allow from three to 10 days after Nov. 5 for the ballot to be delivered. But others — including several swing states, such as North Carolina and Georgia — require mail-in ballots to be received by Election Day to count.
The U.S. Postal Service says that to be sure your mail-in ballot arrives by Election Day, “it would a good idea to mail it” by Oct. 29. If you missed that deadline and drop-off boxes are available in your voting district, you might want to find one.
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