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Whatcom County election officials have increased the frequency of picking up ballots from drop-off points throughout the county following incendiary attacks on ballot boxes in Vancouver, Clark County, and Oregon earlier this week.
The Whatcom County Auditor’s Office said it had previously installed fire suppression systems for the ballot boxes, providing one more layer of protection and security.
In addition to the fire suppression systems, the Whatcom County ballot drop boxes are built with robust safety features. Purchased from Fort Knox, the boxes are anchored to the ground and range from about 325 to 525 pounds, explained Whatcom County Auditor Stacy Henthorn.
All 23 official drop boxes in the county are securely locked and equipped with tamper-evident seals, Henthorn confirmed. Election staff who pick up ballots do so in teams of two, following a checklist of protocols to ensure the chain of custody is preserved.
In Vancouver, emergency responders extinguished a fire on Monday, Oct. 28 inside a ballot drop box near Fisher’s Landing Transit Center. Election staff have identified 488 damaged ballots cast in the box. Nearly 350 of those voters were identified and contacted by the Elections Office to request a replacement ballot as of Tuesday, Oct. 29, the Clark County Auditor’s Office confirmed.
The Clark County incident is thought to be connected to a similar fire in a ballot box about 5 miles away in Portland on the same day and an Oct. 8 incident also in Vancouver, authorities told The Seattle Times. The FBI is working with local, state and other federal law enforcement agencies to investigate the matter. Investigators said Wednesday they believe the man who set the incendiary devices at ballot boxes had a “wealth of experience” in metal fabrication and welding, the Associated Press reported.
“It’s an extremist act,” Renn Cannon, former special agent in charge of the FBI in Oregon, told Oregon Public Broadcasting. “There’s a host of different extremist groups, extremist ideologies under which I can see this fitting where somebody who has bought into that ideology could see this as a logical action.”
Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office deputies have increased their awareness of ballot box locations in unincorporated parts of the county and will be available to respond to any suspicious activity, confirmed Deb Slater, the public information officer at WCSO.
Any suspicious activity should be reported to 911, she said.
“My hope is that every member of our community can exercise their right to vote with confidence and peace of mind,” said Sheriff Donnell Tanksley, whose office is continuing to work closely with the Whatcom County Auditor on security and safety measures around ballot drop box locations.
Drop boxes have become a central part of election-denier conspiracies across the nation, going back to the widely debunked “2,000 Mules,” an election conspiracy theory film that falsely claimed the 2020 election was stolen.
“As a result of that focus, there have been a range of tactics dedicated to deterring people from using them,” explained Devin Burghart, president and executive director of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, an advocacy group that combats white nationalism and other forms of bigotry.
These tactics range from the drop box vigilante efforts in the swing state of Arizona in 2022 to the private surveillance of drop boxes being supported by groups such as the right-wing Texas-based nonprofit True the Vote.
However, Burghart said he was shocked when he first identified social media posts of “activists openly discussing the destruction of ballots” in Democratic strongholds.
“To claim that, because the last election was stolen, therefore, the way to prevent that is to destroy ballots this time around was certainly something that caught us off guard and made us pay a lot more attention,” he said.
Burghart explained that the attacks likely are attempting to serve two purposes: make people think that drop boxes aren’t safe and act as a kind of retribution against more liberal voters.
Nonetheless, he said it is key for the public to be reminded that the election system is safe and voters should cast their ballots early and follow up, when possible, to ensure their ballots were received.
“This is an opportunity for individuals to come in to register to vote or update their address, get a ballot if they never received one or a replacement ballot if theirs is lost or damaged,” Henthorn said. “This is also a great opportunity to observe ballot processing in the Election Center, Suite B03.”
Sign up for text alerts about your ballot
Washington State has a text alert system setup to allow voters to get updates on the status of their ballot throughout the process. Voters can sign up by texting “VOTE” to 868392. If a voter doesn’t want to sign up to receive text messages, they can log into VoteWA.gov to view the same information.
Henthorn reminds voters that they are ultimately responsible for ensuring their ballot is in the mail or in an official ballot drop box by 8 p.m. “sharp” on Nov. 5. The Voting Center at the Whatcom County Auditor’s Office will be open from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 2.
Isaac Stone Simonelli is CDN’s enterprise/investigations reporter; reach him at isaacsimonelli@cascadiadaily.com; 360-922-3090 ext. 127.
