Phoenix (AZ Family/AP) — Maricopa County officials held a press conference Tuesday afternoon to discuss the latest steps to secure the 2024 general election. The county announced it has already received more than 1 million early ballots.

Just one week before Election Day, the Maricopa County Board of Elections, Sheriff Russ Skinner, and Supervisor Bill Gates discussed efforts across law enforcement operations to protect election workers and ballots.

“We’re going to make sure that we’re over-preparing and over-estimating every issue, but not enough to ensure that the process moves forward,” Skinner said. “We don’t want to intimidate anyone. We want to make sure that not only the people inside the building, but also the community outside the building, feel safe and secure, and that we have enough staff to respond if needed.” I just want to make sure.”

Election officials said they are actively monitoring more than 70 polling places currently open during early voting, with plans to increase to more than 240 in the future. The department previously announced that more than 3,600 temporary workers would be stationed at locations across the Valley on Election Day.

Additionally, the county is already seeing record numbers when it comes to early voting numbers. Officials said about half of the roughly 2 million voters on the early voting list have already submitted their ballots.

More than 940,000 early votes were cast through the U.S. Postal Service, and about 75,000 people have already voted in person, officials said.

Election security has become a top priority for many, especially after police said last week that a Valley man intentionally set fire to a U.S. Postal Service mailbox in downtown Phoenix. The suspect said his actions were not politically motivated, but authorities said more than a dozen ballots were damaged in the fire.

The sheriff said the county did not see a spike in election-related threats or violent plots like those seen during the previous presidential election cycle.

“Right now, a lot of it has to do with intimidation against people who are involved in the electoral process, against high-level officials and elected officials. There weren’t that many, which is good, but obviously in 2020, We saw that,” Sheriff Skinner said.

Supervisor Gates explained that the county is committed to assessing threats in the age of disinformation, particularly those on social media and other digital spaces.

“There are two reasons. One is security. […] Understand the people who are threatening election officials, the people who are threatening elected officials on social media. That’s being watched,” Gates said. “But we also monitor social media because we understand that we are in an environment where both foreign actors and domestic people are deliberately spreading misinformation about our elections. Because I do.”

In Oregon, drop boxes were set on fire on two separate occasions earlier this month, damaging hundreds of ballots.

Arizona remains a key election battleground four years after the president took office joe biden He became the second Democratic presidential candidate. take charge of the nation For the first time in almost 70 years. The state is one of four Sunbelt states in the nation that are the focus of much of the presidential campaign in the final stretch before Election Day.

Democratic vice president kamala harris and former Republican president donald trump It’s a close race for 11 of the state’s electors. Since winning their party nominations over the summer, they and their vice presidential candidates have I stopped my campaign multiple times. There.

Other competitive races include the U.S. Senate race, which went to Democrats. Ruben Gallego and republican Lake Kali is running to replace retiring independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema and two Republican-held House seats in the Phoenix and Tucson area that Biden won in 2020.

In the state Legislature, Democrats hope to take control of the state Senate for the first time since 1992 and the state House of Representatives for the first time since 1966, when the party last controlled the governorship and both chambers at the same time.

Voters will also decide Statewide voting measures in the spotlight above abortion and immigration, similarly or eliminate the use of partisan primaries in state elections.

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