Oregon and Washington Ballot Drop Boxes Set Ablaze, Incendiary Devices Discovered – One America News Network
OAN Staff Brooke Mallory
1:03 PM – Monday, October 28, 2024
A little over a week before Election Day, ballot drop boxes in Portland, Oregon, and nearby Vancouver, Washington, were set on fire early on Monday morning, according to police.
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Three ballot boxes were severely damaged in Portland, according to local officials, while “hundreds” may have been impacted in Vancouver.
According to the Portland Police Bureau, a sidewalk ballot box in the Central City area had an “incendiary device” inside of it. The fire had been put out by local security forces by the time officers arrived on the scene at around 3:30 a.m. local time.
“Officers determined an incendiary device was placed inside the ballot box and used to ignite the fire,” a statement from the Portland police read, noting that the bureau’s Explosive Disposal Unit removed the mechanism.
Police in Portland are continuing to investigate. The Multnomah County election office claimed that “fire suppressant inside the ballot box protected virtually all the ballots.”
“Voters should be assured that even if their ballots were in the affected box, their votes will be counted,” the statement read.
About 30 minutes after the Portland fire was reported, at 4 a.m. local time, police in Vancouver, Washington, similarly responded to a separate ballot box fire.
According to NBC News affiliate KGW, smoke and flames were observed coming from the box next to the Fisher’s Landing Transit Depot.
When Vancouver police arrived, they found a “suspicious device” close to the box and reported seeing smoke and flames. The bomb was seized by the city’s Metro Explosive Disposal Unit once the fire was extinguished.
Unlike officials in Oregon, Greg Kimsey, the auditor for Clark County, admitted that “hundreds” of ballots may have been damaged. In order to find out the status of their ballot, he advised any voters who put theirs in a box after 11 a.m. on Saturday to get in touch with the office.
Although authorities have not officially assigned a motive, and it is unknown whether the incidents in Portland and Vancouver are connected, they coincide with nationwide election officials maintaining their own vigilance in relation to the concerning trend.
Previous reports of a “suspicious device” next to a downtown ballot box also prompted the Vancouver bomb squad to respond earlier this month, according to police. They later announced that the device was “safely removed” and the vote box itself was allegedly “not compromised,” according to a press summary.
In a fiercely contested House campaign, Democrat Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Vancouver is running against Republican Joe Kent, who is backed by Donald Trump, in Washington’s 3rd Congressional District.
In addition, in Phoenix, a U.S. Postal Service mailbox was set on fire last week, causing damage to an unspecified number of ballots. A suspect who admitted to arson but claimed there was no political motivation for the act was taken into custody by police.
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