[Writer's note: I am a former resident of Vancouver, WA who used the Fisher's Landing Transit Center location to drop off my ballot in 2020. I currently live in Portland, OR, where I mailed in my ballot last week]
Hundreds of early ballots cast for the US presidential election were burned in two suspected attacks in Vancouver, Washington, and Portland, Oregon, early on Monday morning.
Local media reported that firefighters arrived at the scene at 6:30 a.m. on Monday after someone reported smoke coming from a ballot drop box at the Fisher's Landing Transit Center in Vancouver.
TV station KATU captured footage of responders releasing a pile of burning ballots to the grounds. The ballots continued to smolder after the flames had been doused.
Hundreds of ballots were believed to have been inside when smoke was reported billowing from the box, which had last been emptied at 8 a.m. on Sunday. KATU reported that only a few of the ballots deposited thereafter had been saved.
The Vancouver fire was reported after a similar incident in nearby Portland, where police say an incendiary device was set off inside a ballot drop box close to a building hosting the Multnomah County elections division.
Security staff extinguished the fire before police arrived. The device was deactivated and removed by the local bomb squad.
These incidents occurred just days after a similar incident in Phoenix, AZ, where a US Postal Service mailbox containing a small number of ballots was set on fire last Thursday.
Portland and Vancouver, WA, police have requested that anyone with information about the ballot box fires get in touch. The elections auditor for Clark County said voters who had dropped their ballots after 11 am could seek new voting documents at a link on the county’s election web page.