Ballot drop box fires in Oregon and Washington are likely connected, officials say

Around 4 a.m., about a half-hour after the reported fire in Portland, police in Vancouver responded to a ballot box fire.

Flames and smoke could be seen coming from the box near the Fisher’s Landing Transit Depot, NBC affiliate KGW of Portland reported.

Vancouver police said officers arrived to smoke and flames and fond a “suspicious device” next to the box. The fire was put out, and the city’s Metro Explosive Disposal Unit collected the device.

The FBI was investigating, and no further details were immediately available, Vancouver police said.

Clark County Auditor Greg Kimsey said potentially “hundreds” of ballots could be damaged. He added people who placed ballots in the box after 11 a.m. Saturday should contact the office to confirm the status of their ballots.

Shasti Conrad, the chair of the Washington Democratic Party, said she expects Kimsey and law enforcement to “find those responsible and hold them accountable.”

Authorities have not ascribed a motive. The incidents come as election officials across the country have said they are on high alert. For many localities, once-routine election business has become a security challenge, with some adding law enforcement resources and even drones and bulletproof vests out of concerns that extremists inspired by conspiracy theories could seek to disrupt voting or vote counting.

The Vancouver bomb squad responded this month to reports of a “suspicious device” near a downtown ballot box, police said. The device was “safely removed,” and the ballot box itself was “not compromised,” the city said in a news release.

Vancouver is in Washington’s 3rd Congressional District, where Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez faces Donald Trump-backed Republican challenger Joe Kent in a highly competitive House race.

Gluesenkamp Perez said she has requested an overnight law enforcement presence at all ballot drop boxes in Clark County through Election Day.

“Southwest Washington cannot risk a single vote being lost to arson and political violence,” she said in a statement Monday.

Kent said on X he is confident authorities will “stop whoever attacked our democratic process.”

“Stay focused on driving voter turn out & early voting, don’t be deterred from voting by a cowardly act of terrorism,” he wrote.

Several ballots were also damaged in Phoenix last week after a U.S. Postal Service mailbox was set on fire. Police arrested a suspect, who they said admitted committing arson but said the incident was not politically motivated.