WA election security in focus as post-polls counting begins

Now, as election officials continue tallying votes in Washington's most critical races this morning from local legislative to the state Supreme Court, ballot security has been top of mind and Taylor Winkle has more on what happens now that the polls are closed. Taylor. Good morning. Yeah. Good morning, you guys. So the day after Election Day today is actually much busier than Election Day itself. We're here at King County Election headquarters were inside. Poll workers are busy counting the 150,000 ballots brought in from drop boxes last night. They're going to stay that way through the rest of the week, even with just 37% turnout, which was lower than projected. Now we've been talking about security this morning. Here's Kendall Hansen with King County elections. Every single ballot is processed here at our headquarters on our secure second floor. That floor is protected by alarms on every single entrance. You have to badge in and badge off. Anytime you're entering that floor, there's a couple of areas that actually require your fingerprint as well as your badge, and we're only entering those in teams of two. We've got 80 plus security cameras all around the building, and we're live streaming. Anytime we're processing ballots, we have layers and layers of security. Our team is thinking every single day of how to how we make sure that every ballot is counted accurately and how the system works remains both secure and accessible from security measures here at the building where every King County ballot is processed to the physical drop boxes all across Washington to our elections process and the fight playing out in federal court. Washington is defending itself. Aside from yesterday being Election Day, there was also a hearing at U. S. District Court on the Department of Justice's lawsuit for Washington's full unredacted voter roll. Secretary of State Steve Hobbs continues going toe to toe against the federal government over voter privacy here in a statement reacting to it. He maintained the integrity of Washington's voter roll. And as we move through the process, counties will conduct hand counted audits of randomly selected batches of ballots and compare them against tabulator totals before any results are certified. Not only can you stream this process online from the comfort of your home, you can also come down here to King County Elections and tour around the building and watch it for yourself in person. For now, reporting live in Renton, I'm Taylor Winkle Fox 13 News.