How the L.A. County Registrar's Office increased security for 2024 election

The election is just 32 days away, and mail-in ballots are now being sent out.

Election officials are taking extra precautions to ensure safety at the ballot box and vote counting centers.

The Los Angeles County Registrar's Office has 800 vote counters on hand ready to work when millions of ballots start pouring in. While they are in training, officials are tightening security.

Eyewitness News reporter Leo Stallworth talked with L.A. County Registrar of Voters Dean Logan about the extra security.

"Over 200 cameras at this facility," Logan explained. "We have, you know, a record of everything that's happening."

Is this because of what happened during the 2020 elections?

Logan: There's been a lot of talk about the 2020 election, concern, whether that's locally or across the country. So, registrars of voters throughout the United States, I think, have taken these steps to increase security so there can't be a disruption to the process.

But also, we want to convey to voters the importance of their vote. The most important part of securing the election process is the participation of voters. If people don't trust the process and don't participate, then you know that we've minimized the whole purpose of an open democratic society.

You're going to have sheriffs here, canines here. What will the canines be doing?

Logan: Yeah, so we have a great partnership with the L.A. County Sheriff's Office canine unit.

This is responsive to some incidents that happen, both locally, but again, across the country, where we've received suspicious mail with powdery substances in it, and there have been concerns like, could that contain fentanyl, and if that gets out on the floor here, then that could cause safety hazards for folks, and could cause us to have to shut down our operation.

Actually, we think that that's the intent, right? Is a, you know, a disruptive event.

So, we partner with the sheriff's office that when those ballots come in, whether they come from our drop boxes or from the U.S. Postal Service, the canine units examine those first. They are trained to detect anything of a drug or substance that would be suspicious. That enables us, then, to quarantine that piece of mail and have that go through the investigative process but lets us keep on processing all of the rest of the ballots.