The FBI is investigating three separate but linked instances of ballot boxes being set on fire in Oregon and Washington, with hundreds of ballots destroyed in one Clark County precinct that’s home to a nationally watched congressional race.
Police in Portland said they identified a “suspect vehicle” in the case after security cameras from the Multnomah County Elections Office captured footage of a Volvo stopping at the drop box at Southeast Morrison Street, near 10th Avenue, shortly before the fire there was detected.
The Portland Police Bureau said an incendiary device started a fire inside a ballot box in Southeast Portland on Monday morning, leading police and Portland Fire & Rescue to investigate the fire as an arson case.
Just the News reports officers responded to reports of a fire at a ballot box on Southeast Morrison Street between 9th and 10th avenues at about 3:30 a.m., police said in a statement. When the officers arrived, the fire already had been put out by security guards who work in the area.
The Police Bureau’s Explosive Disposal Unit soon arrived and found the incendiary device.
No one was injured, and police haven’t said if there were ballots in the box that were damaged.
The Oregonian reports Clark County is in Washington’s 3rd Congressional District, home to one of the most closely fought Congressional races in the country between Democratic incumbent Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and Republican challenger Joe Kent. The damaged ballots are from a precinct that is a Democratic stronghold that went for Gluesenkamp Perez by a 28-point margin when she and Kent first ran against each other in 2022.
The Oregonian added that in Multnomah County, only three ballots were damaged after police said an “incendiary device” was placed on the ballot box, because of fire suppression equipment installed within the drop-off box.
But in Clark County, a ballot box at the Fisher’s Landing transit center that was also targeted early Monday morning was equipped with similar equipment that failed to activate, auditor Greg Kimsey said.
He called the action a “direct attack on American democracy.”
Kimsey urged anyone who may have placed their ballot in the drop-off box at the Fisher’s Landing transit center at 164th Avenue in Vancouver after 11 a.m. Saturday to check the status of their ballot at votewa.gov.
