Under lock and key: How ballots get from Pennsylvania counties to election offices.

Police escorts, sealed containers and detention papers: These are some of the precautions Pennsylvania counties are taking to ensure the security of ballots as they are transported from polling places to county facilities after polls close on Election Day.

Exact protocols vary by county. In Berks County, for example, poll workers will transport ballots in sealed boxes to the county elections office, where they will be locked in a secure room, according to Stephanie Nojiri, deputy elections director for the county east of Harrisburg.

In Philadelphia, local law enforcement plays a direct role in collecting ballots from polling places.

“Philadelphia police officers will go to polling places around the city after the polls close and collect ballots to be taken back to our headquarters at the end of the night,” said Philadelphia City Commissioner Seth Bluestein, who serves on the board that oversees elections. in the city. “Each district is given a large canvas bag and the boxes containing the ballot papers are placed in this bag and carried by the police.”

After polls close in Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh, poll workers will transport ballots in locked, sealed bags to regional reporting centers where election results are recorded, said David Voye, division manager of the county’s elections division.

From there, county police escort the ballots to a warehouse, where they are stored in locked cages under 24-hour surveillance.

Poll workers and county election officials also use chain-of-custody paperwork to document the transfer of ballots as they move from polling places to secure county facilities.

In Allegheny County, for example, chain of custody forms are used to verify how many used and unused ballots the employee returns to county officials, Voye said. Officials are also checking the seals on the bags used to transport the ballots to confirm whether they are still intact.

There are similar security procedures for counties that use ballot drop boxes to collect mail and absentee ballots. In Berks County, sheriff’s deputies monitor the county’s three distribution boxes throughout the day, according to Nojiri. When county election officials come to unload delivery boxes protected by four locks, they unlock two of the locks while sheriff’s deputies unlock the other two.

Officials remove the ballots, count them, record the number of ballots on a custody sheet, and place the ballots in a sealed box before returning them to the county’s processing center.

“There are all kinds of different custody papers, and they are all reconciled in the days after the election,” Nojiri said.

Philadelphia has 34 ballot boxes that are emptied by election officials every day and twice on Election Day, according to Bluestein. The bags used to transport the ballots from the ballot boxes are also sealed, and the workers who return these ballots fill out and sign a detention form.

“The transportation of ballots is done in a safe and controlled manner, and the public needs to have confidence in the integrity of the ballot collection process,” Bluestein said. he said.