Idaho Secretary of State Phil McGrane says Idaho has precautions in place to make sure voting was safe and secure.
In a press conference on Friday, McGrane said news of ballot boxes being set on fire in Washington and Oregon is alarming, but Idaho has ways to mitigate any damages to ballot drop boxes.
"We do have many of our drop boxes. So, I know here in the Treasure Valley, have fire suppression systems in them," said McGrane. "What's noteworthy, and why I say that is if you've seen the video footage, it's the video footage from Vancouver, Washington, where there was the burning ballots. Oregon also had the same incident in Portland, but the Oregon drop box had a fire suppression system, which did save the ballots inside."
McGrane added that if someone is worried about the safety of their ballot, they can take it to their county’s election office or spoil their absentee ballot and vote in person on Tuesday.
The Secretary of State also explained nobody will know who or what you vote for. For those that participated in mail-in voting, those ballots are sealed in two separate envelopes to disconnect ballots from voters.
"They'll remove all the exterior envelopes first, and then they'll go back through and remove the ballots from the interior. The secrecy sleeve, uh, secondarily, and that's in an effort to disassociate names from ballots in the process" McGrane said.
In person ballots are not linked to voter identity either. McGrane added Ada County’s Ballot Verifier, which allows voters to verify all ballots were accurately recorded and counted, will not be connected to voters. That information will be available a few weeks after the election.
