LAKE COUNTY, Fla. — For the Lake County Supervisor of Elections, ballot security is top of mind as more voters head to the polls for early voting.

What You Need To Know

  • Three incidents around the country are drawing attention to the idea of ballot safety

  • Lake County elections officials are working to make sure local voters can rely on their ballot being counted

  • Voters can log in and track their ballot through all stages of the vote-by-mail process

On the heels of two fires at ballot drop boxes in the Pacific Northwest and a third incident regarding dropped ballots in South Florida, elections offices are working to ensure votes safe.

As many Central Floridians are heading into the voting booth, Supervisor of Elections offices around the state are hard at work making sure ballots are safe.

“Protecting the vote of each individual voter is imperative. We owe it to the voters of the county, the state, and the country to do everything we can to make sure that vote is secure,” Lake County Supervisor of Elections Alan Hays said.

He has led more than a few successful, safe elections in his time. But as voter confidence lacks, especially among Republicans, Hays wants to ensure there’s no funny business when it comes to protecting these ballots.

While there have been a few hiccups as early voting rolls out in other communities, that’s not the reality in Lake County.

“All of us in the elections world are pulling for each other, and we hate to see incidents like this. Here in Florida, all of our ballot intake stations are manned by personnel at any time they are available to intake ballots. So, the likelihood of somebody coming up and doing a vandal act on it is practically zero,” said Hays.

Hays recommends voters use the Track Your Ballot resource. While it may vary county to county, in Lake County, it’s simple, any registered mail in-ballot voter can login to lakevotes.ballottrax.net.

Voters can sign in with their personal information and how you’d like to receive messages. Then, they can receive updates like when ballots are sent out, when they have been received and if there’s an issue with the ballot.

“Here in Lake County, we’ve already had 16,000 more voters this year than we did at the same time in the 2020 election. We are quite pleased with it and hopefully people keep coming,” said Hays.

As each ballot gets counted come Election Day, elections officials throughout the state are taking election security seriously.