Ahead of today's election, 141 Montgomery Count poll workers were carefully guided through a small labyrinth on the lower level of the county building.
To ensure all materials are not tampered with, they were instructed that one Democrat and one Republican must be together to open the election materials.
"A Democrat and a Republic supervisor must be together in the same place to open any of these sealed items," said Montgomery County Deputy Director Guy Aber. "This is how we ensure the integrity and safety of our elections."
Tthe supervisors had to pick up a white binder, a blue pull bag on wheels and a very wide maroon satchel, which wereaterials they needed to set up their poll location.
"Inside the blue bag is their cell phone bag and that's how we contact them, if we need to, or they can contact us for any issues. The electronic poll books or the sign-in stations, the iPads, however many iPads specific are inside of this, you'll notice it is sealed," Aber said.
Then he picks up the wide maroon satchel.
"This is an emergency kit and these are backup emergency ballots. So in the instance that we cannot get into the polling location, the polls were to open let's say at 6:30 a.m. and we were still not able to get access, these people have everything they need in this bag to essentially vote people in the parking lot with an all paper based system that really allows us to slow the process down but allow voting to continue until we can get into that polling location."
According to Aber, between last month and the beginning of November, early voting was low in Montgomery County. About 6,100 cast a ballot in person and about 4,100 turned in an absentee ballot, which are in a cage bearing a Democrat and a Republican lock.
The Secretary of State requires each board of elections to track how an absentee ballot comes inhouse. Aber described the color coded bins his office uses to manage these paper ballots.
"The blue we decided to use as our drop box. So any ballots dropped in the drop box, we would count as blue. The red that you see is over the counter. So any of those voters who came into our office and actually handed in that ballot over the counter, and then the black would be for any just regular received by mail for those absentee ballots," Aber said. "The yellow will be for provisionals and the green are those UOCAVAs, those uniformed overseas civilians."
The absentee ballots are the first counted once polls close at 7:30.
Tonight, WYSO”s Political Reporter Kathryn Mobley will join Jerry Kenney live as we update you on area election returns. You also can go to WYSO.org for the latest results.
