About 475 damaged ballots retrieved from burned mailboxes in Washington state, auditor says

VANCOUVER, Wash. About 475 damaged ballots were retrieved from a ballot box that was burned early Monday in southwest Washington, a county official said Tuesday.

Clark County Auditor Greg Kimsey said workers will begin searching the damaged ballots Wednesday for voter information to contact them about obtaining a new ballot. He said officials believe the workers, even if damaged, will be able to extract voter information from the ballots.

The damaged ballots are separate from an unknown number that were destroyed, Kimsey said.

Incendiary devices damaged and destroyed hundreds of ballots in a mailbox in Vancouver, Washington, and damaged three ballots in a box in Portland, Oregon, in what federal, state and local officials have labeled an attack on democracy before a heated Election Day.

Authorities have said enough incendiary material has been recovered to link the two fires on Monday, as well as an Oct. 8 incident when an incendiary device was planted at another ballot box in Vancouver. No ballots were damaged in that incident.

Surveillance footage captured a Volvo pulling up to the Portland drop box just before security personnel discovered a fire in the box nearby, said Mike Benner, spokesman for the Portland Police Bureau. The incendiary devices were attached to the outside of the boxes.

The FBI is one of the agencies investigating. U.S. Attorney Tessa M. Gorman and Greg Austin, acting special agent in charge of the FBI’s Seattle field office, said in a joint statement Tuesday that they wanted to assure residents that they are working together to investigate the fires and that they will work to hold the person. or people who are responsible ‘fully responsible’.

No arrests had been announced as of Tuesday evening.

The fire at the Portland drop box was quickly extinguished thanks to a fire suppression system in the box and a nearby security guard, police said.

Several hours later, another fire was discovered in a drop box at a transit center across the Columbia River in Vancouver. Vancouver is the largest city 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.

The Vancouver ballot box also had a fire suppression system, but Kimsey said that could not prevent hundreds of ballots from burning. He urged voters who dropped off their ballots in the transit center box after 11 a.m. Saturday to contact his office for a replacement ballot.

The office is increasing the frequency of ballot collection and changing collection times to the evening, Kimsey said, to avoid leaving ballot boxes full of ballots overnight when similar crimes are considered more likely.

Officials in at least two other Washington counties — including King County, where Seattle is located — announced Tuesday that ballot drop boxes will be checked more frequently through Election Day.