Ballot boxes were set ablaze in Oregon and Washington. Should voters be concerned?

Millions of Americans have already cast their ballots in the 2024 presidential election, at polling places or by dropping them in the mail or at ballot boxes — long a popular way to return completed ballots. When some ballots were damaged Monday in fires intentionally set at ballot boxes in Oregon and Washington state, it raised questions about ballot box security and how the votes would be counted.

But election officials told PolitiFact that the overwhelming majority of ballot boxes are secure, and it’s rare for ballots to be lost or destroyed. Election officials are accustomed to and trained in dealing with damaged ballots.

“I think we’ve had a few bad actors here,” said U.S. Election Assistance Commission chairperson Benjamin Hovland. “By and large it’s a secure way to vote.”

In Portland, Oregon, a fire suppression system inside the ballot box protected hundreds of ballots, and three were damaged. The names of the voters were still visible, and the county clerk will follow up with those voters, said Laura Kerns, Oregon secretary of state communications director. Oregon voters can also track their ballots online.

“Voters should be assured that even if their ballots were in the affected box, their votes will be counted,” elections director Tim Scott of Multnomah County, Oregon, said Monday in a news release.

In Vancouver, Washington, the ballot boxes had fire suppression systems, but they appear to have malfunctioned. Election officials identified 488 damaged ballots, according to a news release from Clark County Auditor Greg Kimsey. Vancouver is in Clark County.

Of those 488 voters whose ballots were damaged, 345 had contacted the Clark County elections office to request a replacement ballot as of Tuesday, and election workers were mailing replacement ballots Thursday to the remaining 143 voters. Six ballots were not able to be identified, and others could have burned beyond recognition, Kimsey said.

Millions of ballots have been returned by mail or drop box without incident.

“We’ve had about 50 million early votes, already voted, very few problems,” David Becker, executive director and founder of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, told CBS News on Tuesday. “These are very, very isolated attacks.”

How elections officials handle damaged ballots

There are scenarios in which a ballot could be lost or destroyed, but that is rare, said Hovland, of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

“Election officials will do whatever they can to make that voter whole,” he said. It’s important that voters have their contact information on file with their local board of elections so they can be reached if necessary.

Although ballot box fires are a new development, election officials are accustomed to dealing with damaged ballots.

“It’s not unusual for a voter to call you and say, ‘My dog ate my ballot, I spilled coffee on it,’ and you would issue the voter a new ballot,” said Jennifer Morrell, a former Utah and Colorado state election official who is now chief executive officer of The Elections Group, which does election consulting.

Practices vary by state, but election officials typically count the first ballot received, so even in cases in which a voter fills out a replacement ballot despite a first ballot already having been counted, the replacement would not be counted. If a voter submits two ballots, election officials would flag the incident for authorities responsible for investigating election offenses, Morrell said.

When ballots are so damaged that they cannot be read by machines, but are still intact and the markings still readable, trained bipartisan teams transfer the voters’ selections to new ballots so that machines can read them, Morrell said.

Fire-damaged ballots that still have sufficient information to identify a voter can be replaced by contacting the voter. If the ballot turns to ash in a fire, that’s more difficult, Morrell said. A voter can track a ballot online to make sure it has arrived and call the local election office to check a ballot’s status if there are concerns.

If you can’t determine whether your ballot was received, and are unable to obtain a replacement ballot, Morrell recommends going to your polling place on Election Day and voting with a provisional ballot. If your original ballot eventually turned up, your provisional ballot would not be counted.

In Oregon, for example, all voting is done by mail, and a replacement ballot can be issued to any voter who needs one. Unique barcodes on each envelope ensure that only one ballot is counted per registered voter, Kerns said.

Ballot boxes are secure, by and large

Authorities believe the Oregon and Washington ballot box fires are related, and also are related to an Oct. 8 incident in which another drop box in Vancouver was targeted with an incendiary device.

There have been isolated examples of ballots being destroyed in other places in this election cycle. A mailbox was set on fire Oct. 24 in Phoenix, and about 20 ballots were destroyed. Maricopa County election officials contacted voters it knew were impacted, and others who had used that mailbox to mail their ballots were asked to contact the elections office for a replacement ballot. And in 2020, arson at two drop boxes, one in California and the other in Massachusetts, destroyed an estimated 135 total ballots.

Election experts are reassuring voters that ballot boxes are safe to use.

Suzanne Almeida, director of state operations for Common Cause, a public advocacy group, told reporters in a Tuesday webinar that “we have not seen a trend with the fires.”

“Vote by mail is still incredibly secure,” including the use of ballot drop boxes, Almeida said.

Almeida encouraged voters to track their mail ballots online. Many election offices allow voters to sign up to receive texts or emails when their completed ballots have been received.

Each state runs its own elections, but many drop boxes have fire suppression systems, and many boxes are monitored with surveillance cameras; some states have laws that require monitoring by staff or a video camera. Others are located inside buildings, inaccessible to the public overnight. In Clark County, election officials said they would collect ballots from the boxes before 5:30 p.m. each day, so they are not full overnight, and increase patrols around the boxes. Election staff are also observing ballot boxes around the clock.

The Associated Press surveyed election officials after the 2020 election and found there were no widespread problems with ballot boxes, and none that could have affected the results.

Drop boxes are generally more secure than standalone mail boxes. They typically weigh hundreds of pounds, can be bolted into the ground and have small slots through which people can deposit their ballots. Documented cases of security problems are rare.

PolitiFact senior correspondent Amy Sherman contributed reporting.

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