Police to patrol polling places

Utah police departments will be keeping a close eye on the state's 1,800-plus polling places come Tuesday, but the presence of an officer or two shouldn't be seen as a cause for concern, state elections officials say.

"At this time, there is no immediate threat on Election Day to any of our polling places," said Rozan Mitchell, deputy director of the state elections office. "But we wanted to make sure that our voters will be safe, and it's important for them to know that we have taken every precaution."

Mitchell stresses that the concern of state officials has less to do with Osama bin Laden and more to do with the more garden-variety-type emergencies such as a power outage, a gas leak or a prank like a bomb threat.

"It kind of goes back to the year 2000 when Salt Lake County had a bomb threat on Election Day and had to evacuate their building but didn't have a backup plan in place," Mitchell said.

"We were in the parking lot for five hours," Salt Lake County clerk Sherrie Swensen said of the bomb threat. "We were out there helpless as the phones rang off the hook."

Hoping never to be caught off guard again, Swensen and staff have since set aside supplies and election materials at an off-site location as a precaution.

With Swensen's experience in mind, state officials — who were also well aware of the terrorist Internet "chatter" warning of possible Election Day attacks, such as the Madrid train bombings that occurred just before the elections there — have encouraged local clerks to make contingency plans for emergencies or security breaches and to work with their local police in doing so, Mitchell said.

"We felt it important that (clerks) worked with police ahead of time to let (police) know how important it was to send out an officer and take control of the ballot box in the event of any kind of an emergency," Mitchell said.

The response from police won't be obvious to most — it's unlikely that officers will be standing guard when most voters go to the polls — but they won't be far away.

In Salt Lake City, more than 30 officers have been assigned to make periodic rounds of the 85 polling locations in the city, according to a press release issued last week.