Local election offices aim to ensure safety ahead of November
APPLING, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) - With the November election getting closer every day, election security is becoming even more important.
On Wednesday, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger was in town to make sure local elections officials are ready for any kind of attack from cyber to physical.
It’s all to bridge any gaps between election officials and law enforcement to ensure more secure and accurate elections.
“It used to be nice when we did not have these types of situations, but unfortunately, in the world that we live in, we do need to be prepared,” said Executive Director of Elections Augusta-Richmond County Travis Doss.
Their focus is on cyber and physical security comes ahead of election day.
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Raffensperger said: “We want everyone to understand you can trust the results, and that’s why I’ve been doing tabletop exercises like this on security, but we’ve also been doing health checks or really audits of the voting equipment to that is recording the votes accurate it hasn’t been tampered with.”
He says this year everyone will be required to show a photo ID for absentee voting.
They have done two audits to citizenship and added another day of early voting.
They’ve also sent Narcan to every county after someone attempted to send fentanyl to Fulton County.
“We use paper ballots for everything with security paper. It’ll have the water seal, you know, the state seal on there, so you’ll know it’s official ballot paper. We can do a 100% hand recount of those paper ballots. We have photo ID for all forms of voting. We’ve verified citizenship, and lines have to be shorter than one hour,” said Raffensperger.
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Columbia County says they plan on adding even more security to the polls.
“I, personally, think it’s needed. I think our voters in Columbia County, especially our poll workers, they enjoy having a deputy. We have a deputy on election day at every precinct, and it brings a little sense of comfort and peace knowing that they’re there,” said Board of Elections Director for Columbia County Nancy Gay.
And Richmond County agrees that you can never be too safe.
Doss said: “Since we have four advanced voting locations, we are looking at the possibility of having more security at those locations, and then making sure that on election day we have more of a security presence.”
November will be here before we know it, and there’s still time to to vote.
For more information on how to or update your registration, visit https://georgia.gov/-vote.
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