Rising Threats to Election Workers, Fires in Ballot Drop Boxes Foreshadow Post-Election Disturbances

There’s one week until Election Day, November 5th, and law enforcement officials across the country are having to deal with a rising wave of threats to election workers and political activists, plus having now to contend with fires in mailboxes — all foreshadow a presidential contest hurtling toward an aftermath that could include unprecedented violence and disturbances.

According to today’s Union-Tribune:

Last week, the Justice Department unsealed a complaint against a man in Philadelphia who had vowed to skin alive and kill a party official recruiting volunteer poll watchers. The next day, the police in Tempe, Ariz., arrested a man in connection with shootings at a Democratic campaign office, which resulted in no injuries, and other acts of political vandalism.

In another incident, prosecutors charged a 61-year-old man from Tampa, Fla., with threatening an election official — on top of pending charges over menacing messages sent in the past five years. And last Thursday, police officers in Phoenix arrested a person in connection with a mailbox fire, damaging some 20 ballots in a Democratic stronghold.

And now there’s more for all of us to deal with.

Incendiary devices were set off Monday at two ballot drop boxes — one in Portland, Ore., and another in nearby Vancouver, Wash. — destroying hundreds of ballots in what one official called a “direct attack on democracy” about a week before a heated Election Day. The early morning fire at the drop box in Portland was extinguished quickly, thanks to a suppression system inside the box as well as a nearby security guard, police said, and just three ballots were damaged there.

But within a few hours, another fire was discovered at a transit center drop box across the Columbia River in Vancouver. Vancouver is the biggest city in Washington’s 3rd Congressional District, the site of what is expected to be one of the closest U.S. House races in the country, between first-term Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and Republican challenger Joe Kent.

The ballot box in Vancouver also had a fire suppression system inside, but that . failed to prevent hundreds , of ballots from burning, l said Greg Kimsey, the long-: time elected auditor in Clark County, Wash., which includes Vancouver. He urged voters who dropped their ballots in the transit center box after 11 a.m. Saturday to contact his office for a replacement ballot.

“Heartbreaking;” Kimsey . said. “It’s a direct attack on : democracy.” The office will be increasing how frequently it collects ballots and changing collection times to the evening, t Kimsey said, to keep the ballot boxes from remaining full of ballots overnight.

Authorities said at a news conference in Portland that enough material from the incendiary devices was recovered to show that the two fires Monday were connected — and that they were also connected to an Oct. 8 incident in Vancouver. No ballots were damaged in that incident.

Surveillance images captured a Volvo pulling up to a drop box in Portland just before security personnel nearby discovered a fire inside the box on Monday.

Just yesterday, Oct. 28, the Rag reported on tampering with two mail boxes, one in Point Loma and the other in La Jolla.

More from the U-T (citing from a NY Times article):

Law enforcement’s task this year goes far beyond the relatively straightforward job of providing physical security — to the essential mission of safeguarding the election from individuals and groups who want to instill fear and uncertainty, even if they never resort to violence.

Political battlegrounds are taking on the sobering characteristics of actual ones. Drones, barriers and snipers are expected to be deployed at some offices and polling sites. Bulletproof glass and armed security patrols are becoming increasingly commonplace everywhere.

“The fact that election workers need to be worried about their security is incomprehensible and unacceptable,” Christopher Wray, the director of the FBI, said in a statement last week after the Justice Department released an update on threats to election workers and political activists.

The Department of Homeland Security issued an internal memo last month warning that some domestic extremists were “engaging in illegal preparatory or violent activity that they link to the narrative of an impending civil war,” according to a report obtained through an open records request by Property of the People, a nonpartisan group.

Federal officials have not released data on the volume of violent threats and incidents of intimidation reported by local governments, but experts say it has increased substantially since the summer. Still, the threat level has been manageable thus far.
Federal law enforcement officials say that for the moment, there are no indications of an organized effort to disrupt the electoral process as in 2021, when supporters of President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol.

Nonetheless, anxiety is spreading at all levels of government. There have already been two assassination attempts against the former president this year, and officials remain concerned about lone actors as well as potential militia activity, although none has vet been detected.

Attacks on ballot boxes are attacks on democracy.

Over the summer, the Department of Homeland Security issued a warning that was both alarming and, unfortunately, necessary. Election agencies across the nation were cautioned about emerging threats to destroy ballot drop boxes — a cornerstone of our democratic process that enables millions of Americans to exercise their right to vote safely and conveniently.

Earlier this month, Wired Magazine brought this issue into sharper focus. The publication reported that online groups have been actively sharing methods to burn or blow up these ballot drop boxes. These groups are exchanging recipes for homemade chemicals designed to destroy paper ballots. The goal behind these actions is clear: To sow doubt in our election system and perpetuate the myth of widespread voter fraud. According to Wired, these groups hope that such incidents will escalate tensions and potentially spark even more severe violence.

All of this, all these threats have to do, of course, in trying to make Americans doubt the integrity of our elections — and that only helps one side. Guess which one.