By Albert Chang-Yoo
On the morning of Oct. 28, a ballot box in Vancouver, Washington went up in flames. The incident was reported to local police around 4 a.m. and followed a string of attempted arson incidents within the Vancouver-Portland metropolitan area. Footage of ballots burning at the scene was filmed by local news outlet KATU and quickly spread over social media. Vancouver, about 135 miles south of Tacoma, is in the midst of a hotly contested Congressional race that has attracted national attention.
Clark County Auditor Greg Kimsey told CBS News that about 488 ballots were damaged in the attack, with more potentially burned to ash. As of Oct. 29, 345 of the identified voters had requested a new ballot. On Oct. 30, the AP reported that investigators had found messages saying “Free Palestine” and “Free Gaza,” though it’s unclear if the perpetrators were actually pro-Palestinian activists or if they were trying to misdirect authorities.
The incident follows another ballot box fire in Portland, Oregon just a few hours before the attack in Vancouver. Only three ballots were destroyed in that attack. Officials believe the events are connected, and also linked them to a failed attempted arson of another ballot box in Vancouver on Oct. 8. In a press conference, police spokesman Mike Benner said the suspect is a man between 30 and 40 years old with a medium-thin build.
Both attacks happened amid tightly contested congressional races. In Oregon’s 5th Congressional District, Republican incumbent Lori Chavez-DeRemer is running against Democrat Janelle Bynum. The seat was flipped to Republican in 2022 after 25 years of Democrat control. In Washington’s 3rd Congressional District, Democrat incumbent Marie Gluesenkamp Perez is trying to maintain her seat after upsetting Trump-backed Republican Joe Kent in a traditionally red district. Perez defeated Kent by just 2,629 votes in 2022. In response to the attack, Perez’s campaign put out a statement: “We can’t yield to intimidation, and we must continue to stand up against unpatriotic acts such as this one.” On X (formerly Twitter), Kent called it a “cowardly act of terrorism” and encouraged voters to trust in the mail-in process.
“This is an attempt to instill seeds of fear and distrust. Fear of getting involved politically and distrust of the election process and of each other. And that fear is damaging to democracy,” Politics and Government Professor Robin Jacobson said regarding the ballot box attacks. Professor Jacobson, who is teaching a class this semester on campaign and election politics, recently took students to observe the Pierce County election office. “It was a reassuringly boring process with color-coded boxes, strict rules, and redundancies everywhere,” Jacobson said.
The role of ballot boxes has heightened as mail-in voting becomes more common. According to MIT’s election tracker, 32% of the electorate cast a mail-in ballot in 2022. Washington and Oregon are some of the only states in the country that send all their ballots by mail. Ballot box drop offs are usually under tight video or police surveillance and contain fire suppressants. Despite this, voting by mail has come under scrutiny by right-wing politicians who erroneously claim that mail-in ballots increase the risk of voter fraud. Former President Donald Trump has consistently and baselessly attacked this feature of America’s electoral process.
While this article was written before Election Day, the conversation surrounding electoral safety will undoubtedly shadow the results of the 2024 race — as it did during 2020. Trump’s unwillingness to recognize the results of the 2020 election set off a wave of election denialism, which ultimately culminated in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. All of this indicates how political polarization has affected the democratic system. “We should not let it shape our understanding of those that disagree with us,” Professor Jacobson said. “People show greater commitment to democracy when they are less fearful of political opponents.”