(WASHINGTON) — Election officials in Vancouver, Washington, are encouraging voters to check the status of their absentee ballots after an arsonist lit a ballot drop box on fire on Monday morning, damaging hundreds of ballots one week before Election Day.
While incidents of bad actors targeting ballot drop boxes are rare, experts told ABC News that the infrastructure surrounding absentee voting over the last decade has allowed election officials to be prepared for such incidents, through the use of 24-hour surveillance, fire suppression systems, and advanced ballot tracking software.
“These are the types of scenarios that election officials are staying up at night thinking about and have been thinking about for years and as part of their contingency planning,” said Claire Woodall-Vogg, the former executive director of the Milwaukee Election Commission. “While it’s very rare, it’s something that your election official has definitely thought about.”
Monday’s arson attack — which destroyed hundreds of ballots in Vancouver, Washington and three in Portland, Oregon — follows other incidents last week when ballots in Florida and Arizona were damaged in transit. Phoenix officials also arrested a man for arson last week after he allegedly lit a fire inside a USPS collection mailbox, destroying five ballots, and federal prosecutors in Florida charged another man last week for allegedly disposing of hundreds of pieces of election mail, including at least one ballot.
Here’s what to know about dealing with a ballot that’s been damaged.
How can voters find out if their ballot is impacted?
Voters who suspect their ballot might be impacted should contact their local election office to confirm if their ballot has been received, according to Brian Hinkle, senior voting policy researcher at the Movement Advancement Project.
Forty-seven states offer free ballot tracking services, allowing voters to confirm if their ballots have been mailed, received and counted. In Clark County, Washington — where Vancouver is located — voters can track their ballots through the VoteWA online tool.
“If they don’t receive a message that their ballot has been accepted for counting or even received by the county office to be accepted, they’re going to know something’s wrong,” said Steve Olsen, the president of BallotTrax, a software company whose ballot tracking service covers 28% of American voters.
When possible, election officials will also attempt to contact any voter they believe may be impacted by an incident to ensure their ballots are received or to help with a replacement ballot. Because the USPS recommends that voters mail their ballot by Oct. 29 to ensure it is received in time, some voters who request replacement ballots may need to vote in person rather than attempt to vote by mail again.
“There are systems in place in every state, with every legal system, to make sure that someone’s vote wouldn’t be taken away from them by such a criminal act,” said Woodall-Vogg.
How are election officials able to track individual ballots?
According to Olsen, election officials are able to track individual ballots by using “intelligent mail barcodes” that are embedded in envelopes for absentee ballots.
“Voters can track their ballots similarly to how they would track package delivery,” said Hinkle.
The barcodes — which are printed on the envelopes sent to voters, as well as the return envelopes for the ballots themselves — allow voters to track when their absentee ballot is mailed out, sent back, and received by election officials.
The tracking technology cannot see how a ballot has been filled out.
“Basically, what we’re doing is tracking the envelopes,” said Olsen. “We have no access to the ballot.”
BallotTrax works with election offices in 546 counties across the United States, covering 72 million voters and tracking over 240 million ballots. Created in 2009 to assist the city of Denver its elections, the company expanded tenfold in 2020 when large swaths of the country moved to mail-in voting as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Individual counties foot the bill for the BallotTrax service, which allows voters to opt-in to receive free updates about their ballot status, according to Olsen. Even if a voter does not opt in to tracking, election offices can still track ballots to identify issues.
Once a ballot makes it to a local election office and is removed from its return envelope, the ballot is no longer identifiable to a particular voter, preserving the anonymity of the vote.
“Once the ballot is pulled out of the envelope, where all of the identification marks are on it, it becomes anonymous at that point,” Olsen said.
What happens to damaged ballots?
If a ballot is damaged in transit but still recognizable, election officials can attempt to remake the ballot so that it can be fed into a voting machine. Bipartisan teams are involved in the process known as “ballot duplication.”
“The election workers will reconstruct the ballot to preserve the voters’ intent and translate it onto a clean new ballot,” Hinke said.
If a voter suspects their ballot might be damaged, they should contact their local election office to confirm if their ballot has been received or if they need to request a replacement ballot.
Are ballot drop boxes safe?
Despite the recent high-profile incidents, ballot drop boxes are still one of the most secure ways to cast a ballot, according to experts.
Most ballot drop boxes are tamper proof, bolted to the ground, under 24-hour surveillance, and include fire suppression systems. In most areas, the ballots themselves are picked up by two-person teams.
“We have a chain-of-custody system in place so that we know when we picked up the ballots and when we dropped them off, and all the ballots have barcodes on them, so that they’re secure,” said George Dreckmann, a longtime poll worker in Milwaukee. “So the drop box system is as safe as putting it in the mail, and in some cases, might even be safer.”
Drop boxes in many states have fire suppression systems that extinguish fires using powder rather than water, preventing further damage to the ballots. While the fire suppression system failed to work effectively during Monday’s arson attack in Clark County, election officials credited the fire suppression system with saving over 400 ballots in neighboring Multnomah County, Oregon.
“These boxes are very secure, and voters should be able to trust using them,” said Hinkle.
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