SEATTLE — Election officials say they are taking proactive steps to ensure voter safety. This comes after several arson attacks on ballot boxes in Vancouver, Washington and Portland, Oregon recently.

“We are going to provide security to all of our voting centers across the county that opened today and will be open Monday and Tuesday, Election Day, and we have 24-hour security at our headquarters in Renton.” , said Kendall Hodson, head of King County Elections Personnel.

King County voters can still register and vote until the 8 p.m. deadline on Election Day.

King County election voting centers were open Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. for voters who still need to register, update their registration, obtain a replacement ballot or use an accessible voting device (provides ballots audio voting and other alternative formats for voters with disabilities).

“We expect there to be queues at voting centers on election day, so we strongly encourage voters to come and see us on Saturday or Monday if they need assistance .” » Halei Watkins, communications manager for King County elections.

Election officials assure voters that polling locations and ballot boxes will be secure.

“We’re typically picking them up once a day during this election cycle. We’re doing it up to twice a day after some of the incidents we’ve seen in the south, so our people have added a team and are going to be out more .by frequently making sure to get the ballots out of those boxes more frequently,” Hodson said.

As for ballot counting, officials said they conducted rigorous testing last year to ensure their systems worked and would continue to do so even after the election.

“On the Thursday after Election Day, we will do what is called a batch audit during which we will manually count a number of batches of ballots to ensure they match the total shown on our tabulation system ” Hodson said.

All voting locations and times can be found online here.