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Election officials review security, practice transporting ballots ahead of General Election

A red and white sign with an arrow pointing towards doors that says "Polling Place"
Roman Battaglia
/
Delaware Public Media

The state is gearing up for a high turnout in next month’s General Election.

The state Board of Elections met Monday for the last time before the election, which should see an unprecedented level of mail-in voting. 

Election Commissioner Anthony Albence announced at the board meeting that the state has begun working with the Delaware National Guard on cybersecurity. The Guard will advise the state Department of Technology and Information (DTI) on its incident response plans for this and future election cycles.

“It’s not the Guard coming in in any sense and taking over anything,” said Albence. “It’s really the guard augmenting what DTI is doing and helping what DTI is doing.”

Albence also told the Board the state saw a last-minute bump in voter registration ahead of the deadline last Saturday. Nearly 3,000 additional voters registered in the first ten days of this month. 

Over 162,000 Delawareans have requested mail-in or absentee ballots. That far outpaces the number who voted that way in last month’s Primary Election. 

Albence said 50,000 of the mail-in and absentee votes have been returned. 

“They’re coming back fast and furious,” he said Monday. “[They're] going out fast and furious.”

Because of the big increase in absentee and mail-in voting, as well as the paper ballots generated by the new voting machines, election officials will need to transport many more ballots to the courthouses for the canvass of the vote after the election.

Albence says officials have already done “dry runs” to practice transporting dozens of containers full—and that the courts will need to bring in additional staff to guard the materials. 

 

Sophia Schmidt is a Delaware native. She comes to Delaware Public Media from NPR’s Weekend Edition in Washington, DC, where she produced arts, politics, science and culture interviews. She previously wrote about education and environment for The Berkshire Eagle in Pittsfield, MA. She graduated from Williams College, where she studied environmental policy and biology, and covered environmental events and local renewable energy for the college paper.
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