What Happens to the Hundreds of Ballots Affected by Recent Drop Box Fires

Hundreds of ballots in Washington and a few in Oregon were destroyed by drop box fires on Monday — nearly a week before Election Day.

On Oct. 28 at 3:30 a.m., a ballot drop box was set ablaze in Portland, Oregon, and at 4 a.m., one in Vancouver, Washington was also set on fire. The Portland Police Bureau said that an “incendiary device” placed inside the box started the fire and that investigators believe the two incidents are connected. No suspects are in custody yet.

In Vancouver, hundreds of ballots were damaged or destroyed in the incident, Clark County Auditor Greg Kimsey said. In a statement, he called the action “an attack on American democracy.”

Voters who deposited ballots into the drop box at the Fisher’s Landing C-Tran Transit Center between 11 a.m. Saturday through 4 a.m. Monday were impacted, according to the Clark County website. 

Kimsey explained that election officials salvaged the ballots they could and were able to process them, but many ballots were too damaged to be processed through the sorting machine.

He told voters to check the state’s voting portal to see if their ballot was received by Monday, Oct. 28, and if they don’t see that it was, then they can get a new ballot. 

Voters can get a new ballot by going to the Clark County Elections Office in downtown Vancouver or by contacting the county’s Department of Elections at 564-397-2345 or [email protected]. Affected voters can also go online to print out a replacement ballot.

Absentee ballots are due on Election Day by 8 p.m., and voters can either mail their ballots or utilize ballot boxes throughout Clark County. The county’s elections department urges voters using drop boxes to deposit their ballots by 5:30 p.m. on a given day because election workers can then retrieve the ballots that same day.

The damaged ballot box is located in Washington’s 3rd congressional district, which has one of the most competitive races in the country in the 2024 election. First-term Democratic U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez faces Republican opponent Joe Kent.

“Our right to vote needs to be protected under all circumstances,” Gluesenkamp Perez said. “We can’t yield to intimidation, and we must continue to stand up against unpatriotic acts such as this one.”

Portland’s ballot box did not face as much destruction as the Vancouver drop box. This is because a fire suppressant inside the ballot box protected “virtually all the ballots,” with only three of them sustaining damage, according to a release from Multnomah County. The elections division will contact the three affected voters by using unique identifiers on their ballot envelopes and ensure they can receive replacement ballots.

The county also stated that any voter who used the drop box at the 1000 block of SE Morrison St. between 3:30 p.m. on Saturday and 3 a.m. on Monday can contact the county’s elections division at 503-988-6826 with concerns or questions.

“Make no mistake, an attack on a ballot box is an attack on our democracy and completely unacceptable,” Oregon Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade said on Monday. “Whatever the motivation behind this incident, there is no justification for any attempt to disenfranchise voters.”

Another incident occurred in Phoenix last week with a suspect setting a U.S. Postal Service mailbox on fire, which contained around 20 ballots. The suspect was taken into custody.