America's new election shields: panic buttons, bulletproof glass

• Officials are already on edge: This week, the FBI and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service launched an investigation after officials in 16 states reported receiving suspicious packages.
• Several secretaries of state reported being mailed letters containing white powder.

Zoom in: Election officials in Durham County, N.C., soon will move into a new facility equipped with bulletproof glass at the front desk, panic buttons to summon help in any emergencies, a network of security cameras and a separate exhaust system where mail-in ballots will be processed.

• On Election Day, each of the county's 59 polling site coordinators will receive employee badges with panic buttons.
• GPS tracking will be used to follow ballots' chain of custody as they're escorted from polling places to county offices.
• At the end of the night, the chief election judge at each polling place will take ballots to the county's election headquarters with an escort — an election judge from the opposite party.

Similar measures are being taken in Cobb County, Ga., to protect ballots, the roughly 2,200 poll watchers there and hundreds of other permanent and temporary staffers who'll be working on election night.

• The county will use AirTags to track ballot bags that couriers will move each night between early voting locations and Cobb's election headquarters.
• Poll managers will be given radios provided by the 911 system so they'll be able to speak with dispatchers on encrypted channels for any type of assistance they need. The radios also have panic buttons.
• Sheriff's deputies will be at early voting locations and Election Day precincts, along with local police and school resource officers.

The vote totals in Cobb County — a mostly Democratic suburb of Atlanta in a much-watched swing state — will draw national interest on Election Night.

• At the recommendation of the federal Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the county is installing concrete bollards in front of gas lines and the glass doors of the election headquarters building.
• It's also adding film to the building's windows to try to reduce damage from any explosives or other objects thrown at the building. Silent alarms also are being installed.

The big picture: "Before 2016, election official work, or at least the director of elections, was seen as more clerical, administrative," Derek Bowens, Durham's elections director, told Axios.

• "Now, you're a cybersecurity specialist, logistics specialist. We need to know how to write continuity of operations plans. You have to coordinate with multiple security partners."
• "That integrity, public transparency — it's required because of the threat landscape we're dealing with," Bowens said.

Between the lines: Security measures aside, Cobb County Director of Elections Tate Fall says the county is using new digital tools to automate parts of the election process and increase transparency.

• One digitizes the chain of custody of applications for mail-in ballots. Officials receive real-time updates on how many applications the county has received and where they are in the voting process.
• Georgia also is using a new audit tool that will compare images of ballots to the results that are uploaded to reporting systems on Election Day.

What they're saying: "Local election administrators continually prepare for a variety of scenarios ... before, during, and after Election Day," said Carolina Lopez, executive director at the Partnership for Large Election Jurisdictions, an elections association.

• "I don't think I've seen election officials plan for more operational scenarios than this year."