Hundreds of ballots were destroyed in ballot box fires in Oregon and Washington

SEATTLE – Authorities were investigating Monday after early morning fires were set at ballot drop boxes in Portland, Oregon, and in nearby Vancouver, Washington, where hundreds of ballots were destroyed.

The Portland Police Bureau said officers and firefighters responded to a fire at one of the ballot drop boxes around 3:30 a.m. and determined there was an incendiary device inside. Multnomah County Elections Director Tim Scott said the fire retardant in the drop box protected almost all of the ballots; only three were damaged, and his office planned to contact voters to help them obtain replacement ballots.

A few hours later, across the Columbia River in Vancouver, television crews recorded footage of smoke billowing from a ballot box at a transit center. Vancouver is located in Washington’s 3rd Congressional District, the site of what is expected to be one of the closest U.S. House races in the country between first-term Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and Republican challenger Joe Kent.

Clark County Auditor Greg Kimsey in Vancouver told The Associated Press that the ballot drop box at Fisher’s Landing Transit Center was also equipped with a fire suppression system, but for some reason it was not effective. Emergency workers pulled a burning stack of ballots from the box, and Kimsey said hundreds were killed.

“Heartbreaking,” Kimsey said. “This is a direct attack on democracy.”

Kimsey said the last collection of ballots from the transit center’s drop box was at 11 a.m. Saturday. Anyone who left their ballot there after that was asked to contact the auditor’s office to obtain a new one.

Kimsey said the office will be increasing the frequency of ballot collection and changing collection times to the evening to keep ballot boxes from filling up with ballots overnight, when similar crimes are believed to occur more frequently.

An incendiary device was also found on or near a ballot box in downtown Vancouver in early October. It did not damage the box or destroy any ballots, police said. The FBI and other agencies opened an investigation.

Washington and Oregon are the states that require mail-in voting. Registered voters receive ballots in the mail several weeks before the election and then return them by mail or drop them in ballot boxes.

Last week in Phoenix, officials said about five ballots were destroyed and others damaged when a fire broke out in a drop box at a U.S. Postal Service station there.