With polls opening in a little more than 12 hours, the top election officials in Ohio and Pennsylvania spent Monday reassuring the public about election integrity and preparedness.

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose acknowledged potential challenges on election day but says plans are in place to address any issues that may arise.

"We have our election day operations center and again, this probably comes from my military background, but I identified early on in this office, five years ago, a need to have a more centralized way of dealing with issues that come up on election day," LaRose said. "We work through this anywhere from 200 to 300 different issues pop up, a power outage, a traffic jam, maybe a piece of equipment that's not functioning correctly, or a poll worker that's not following their training. When these things pop up, we can quickly triage those. We can react to them."

LaRose also wants to be clear the state has made great strides in the accuracy of voter rolls.

"We not only take deceased voters off on a monthly basis, but we identify in those rare cases where non-citizens become registered to vote, and candidly, they probably only spend a couple weeks on the rolls before we catch it and remove it," LaRose said. "And over 700 times this year we've identified non-citizens who became registered, we removed them, and in some cases, referred them to county prosecutors or to the AG, because to be clear, that's a crime."

LaRose says the first votes counted in Ohio are early votes and absentees and walked through the process.

"We've pre-processed those absentee ballots as they came in," LaRose said. "What does that mean? That means a bipartisan team has cut open the envelope. They've looked at the security envelope to identify the first name, middle name, last name, date of birth, address, last four of the social state, driver's license, number, match the signatures. These bipartisan teams go through that process to prove that that voter is, in fact, the person that they say they are. Then they sever the identity from the ballot. That's when it becomes that secret ballot that we all rely on. They flatten that ballot out. That may sound trivial, but taking the folds out of the ballot so that it goes smoothly through the scanner is important. Our boards of elections do that, and those ballots are ready to count right at 730 we will report quickly, but we will never sacrifice speed for accuracy."

LaRose has a warning for anyone trying to commit voter fraud.

"To be clear, voter fraud is rare. Voter Fraud is exceedingly rare, and it's crucial that we keep it that way. If you mess around, you will find out, and if you think that you can get away with election fraud in Ohio, you've got another thing coming. You will face justice for your crime. It is rare in all of human history that we get to choose who our leaders are. If you think about it, for 1000s of years on this planet, the way to choose who was in charge was either force or heredity, and we've got a much better way of doing it. We have a duty to make sure that that process is run smoothly, cleanly, transparently, and to make sure that when Ohioans go to bed on election-night they know whether their favorite candidates won or lost that it was an honest process. That's my duty. That's the duty of 35,000 elections officials, and tomorrow we're going to carry that out."

Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania, Secretary of Commonweath Al Schmidt made two key committments to voters.

"First that Pennsylvania's November 5 election will be free, fair, safe and secure, and second, that all registered voters will have the opportunity to make their voice heard," Schmidt said. "Every registered voter has the right to cast their ballot without harassment or intimidation or discrimination. If you see or experience any of that at your polling place, please report it immediately to the judge of elections. I'd also recommend that you contact your county's elections office or district attorney's office, or you can call the Pennsylvania Department of State's voter Hotline at 1-877-VOTES."

Schmidt is urging voters to verify any election related information they see online or hear from others comes from a reliable source.

I'd also encourage you to remain vigilant, I guess, against last minute miss or disinformation seeking to dissuade you from voting or to undermine confidence in the results," Schmidt said. "The best sources of trustworthy election information in your coming days and will continue to be the Pennsylvania Department of State and your county elections office."

Schmidt noted that two million mail ballots have already been returned, but unlike Ohio, Pennsylvania state law prevents counties from starting to open these ballots until 7 a.m. election morning.

"The Department of State has never had final official results on election night, regardless of whether media outlets have projected winners on that night or a later date, the department is confident the counties will work diligently to count every eligible ballot cast, and we can't predict what percentage of those votes will be counted on election night," Schmidt said. "Voting counties will begin to submit unofficial results to the department after the polls close at 8pm and those will be posted on our election night returns website. Counties will continue to update their unofficial results throughout the night and in the subsequent days, and those updates will be reflected on the website."