Law enforcement teams in Portland, Oregon, and Vancouver, Washington, found themselves responding to similar incidents early on Monday morning: ballot boxes that had been set ablaze.
The incidents, just days out from Election Day, triggered concerns about voting access, especially given that one of those boxes was in a competitive congressional district, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation said it would investigate.
Democrats in Washington state called it an “attempt to disenfranchise Washington voters.”
“Washington Democrats trust law enforcement and the Clark County Auditor to find those responsible and hold them accountable,” said state Democratic Chair Shasti Conrad in a statement.
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Portland is deep blue, and the district of that ballot box is considered safely Democratic. But the Vancouver ballot box was located in one of the country’s most competitive districts, where Republican Joe Kent is attempting to unseat Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez.
Both the Democratic and the Republican candidates in that congressional district urged voters who worried their ballots may have been affected to check their ballot status with the Clark County auditor’s office and request a replacement if needed.
Gluesenkamp Perez, in a statement, called for law enforcement to monitor all election drop boxes in Clark County through Election Day.
Republicans blamed mail-in voting, which is the primary system in Washington and Oregon, for creating the opportunity for the crimes. Republicans have politicized mail-in voting in recent years.
“Washington needs to get back to in-person, same-day voting,” state GOP Chair Jim Walsh told NOTUS in a statement. “Our experiment with ‘100% mail-in-voting’ is not secure because of the broken chain-of-custody issues inherent in mail-in voting. These arson attacks are proof of that.”
Mike Benner, a spokesperson for the Portland Police Bureau, told NOTUS that only three ballots were damaged in that ballot box-burning incident. In Vancouver, KATU first reported that “hundreds” of ballots were inside that box when it was set on fire, and many may not have been salvageable.
A spokesperson for the FBI’s Seattle office said in a statement to NOTUS that the agency is “coordinating with federal, state and local partners to actively investigate these incidents and to determine who is responsible.”
These were at least the third and fourth incidents of ballot-related crime in the last week after a USPS mailbox in Phoenix, Arizona, was set on fire on Oct. 24, damaging a handful of mail-in ballots (although the suspect claims his actions were not politically motivated). A separate stolen USPS key resulted in blank ballots being shoved down a storm drain in Orlando, Florida, the previous day.
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Helen Huiskes is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.
Editor’s Note: This story has been updated with additional reporting.
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