![Cuyahoga County Board of Elections Director Pat McDonald expects 50 percent voter turnout [Glenn Forbes / ideastream]](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/cc0f797/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1000x562+0+0/resize/840x472!/format/webp/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Flegacy%2Fuploads%2F2018%2F11%2F01%2FBOE.jpg)
The director of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections says voter turnout in this year's midterms is expected to be higher than usual.
Pat McDonald expects 50 percent turnout based on early voting, surpassing the 2014 and 2010 midterms.
"In 2014, there was a 40 percent turnout and in 2010, it was a 44 percent turnout," McDonald said. "We have already exceeded the number of early voters compared to those previous elections."
McDonald says most days inside the Board of Elections have been busy with early voters. Over 10,000 people have already cast a ballot, a figure expected to grow to 17,000 before Election Day.
"Over 900,000 people are registered to vote in this election and I believe 450,000 of them will come out and vote," McDonald said. "There will be at least 180,000 vote by mail and early voters and over 270,000 ballots will be cast on Election Day."
Speaking on election security, McDonald says voting machines and tabulation computers in the county can't be hacked because they're not connected to the internet or any other network.
"The ballots we use to vote serve as a hard copy of election results and after each election, we audit those ballots and we conduct an audit to ensure that all the ballots and votes are accounted for within the county," McDonald said. "Because it's not connected, there's no way that an individual can hack that without physically being in front of that scanner, and we have safeguards in place and bipartisan poll workers that ensure that they don't have that opportunity."
McDonald says to ensure security inside the the board of elections, they use politically balanced teams.
"All locks, safes and vault combinations, as well as computer passwords, are divided into two," McDonald said. "They require a member of each political party to open any of those entities."
McDonald added many boards of election have been focused on security the last 18 months and he believes Cuyahoga County has one of the best systems in the country because it is offline.
