George Bunn
Guest Reporter
Hundreds of election ballots have been set alight in two states ahead of next week's US presidential election.
Police said that the fires happened in Washington and Oregon, exacerbating tensions ahead of the upcoming knife-edge contest between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.
Local detectives said that the fires in the two states were believed to be connected and that a vehicle involved had been identified.
Both states lean heavily for the Democrats and Vice President Harris.
Local media reports firefighters went to the scene after smoke was reported coming from a ballot drop box in Vancouver in Washington state at 6.30am on Monday,
The elections auditor for Clark county said voters who had cast their ballots into it after 11am could seek new voting documents at a link on the county’s election web page.
Local Democrat congresswoman Marie Gluesenkamp Perez said: "There is absolutely zero place in our democracy for political violence or interference against our fellow citizens, election workers, or voting infrastructure
"Our right to vote needs to be protected under all circumstances. We can’t yield to intimidation, and we must continue to stand up against unpatriotic acts such as this one."
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The chief elections official in Washington, Secretary of State Steven Hobbs, said in a statement: "We take the safety of our election workers seriously and will not tolerate threats or acts of violence that seek to undermine the democratic process."
It comes after a similar incident in Portland, Oregon, where police say an incendiary device was set off inside a ballot drop box close to a building hosting the Multnomah county elections division.
Meanwhile, a US Postal Service mail box containing a small number of ballots was set on fire in Phoenix, Arizona, last Thursday.
Police arrested a 35-year-old man who they said admitted to the crime while he was in custody. They also said he had told them his actions had not been politically motivated and he had committed the offense with the purpose of getting himself arrested.
In the last week before the election, Republican Donald Trump appealed to religious voters in the southern swing state of Georgia while Harris appeared at a rally in Ann Arbor, Michigan with her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, that featured a performance by singer-songwriter Maggie Rogers.
It comes as Trump faces pressure over his rally in New York, where a comedian called Puerto Rico a "floating island of garbage," prompting a backlash from Latino celebrities and criticism from both Republican and Democratic politicians. The Trump campaign has said the joke did not reflect their views.
Some 46 million Americans have voted already, according to the Election Lab at the University of Florida, including some 2.8 million people in Georgia and 1.9 million people in Michigan, where Harris arrived on Monday.
That trails the roughly 60 million people that had voted early by about this point in 2020, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.
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Police said that the fires happened in Washington and Oregon, exacerbating tensions ahead of the upcoming knife-edge contest between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.
Local detectives said that the fires in the two states were believed to be connected and that a vehicle involved had been identified.
Both states lean heavily for the Democrats and Vice President Harris.
Local media reports firefighters went to the scene after smoke was reported coming from a ballot drop box in Vancouver in Washington state at 6.30am on Monday,
The elections auditor for Clark county said voters who had cast their ballots into it after 11am could seek new voting documents at a link on the county’s election web page.
Local Democrat congresswoman Marie Gluesenkamp Perez said: "There is absolutely zero place in our democracy for political violence or interference against our fellow citizens, election workers, or voting infrastructure
"Our right to vote needs to be protected under all circumstances. We can’t yield to intimidation, and we must continue to stand up against unpatriotic acts such as this one."
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The chief elections official in Washington, Secretary of State Steven Hobbs, said in a statement: "We take the safety of our election workers seriously and will not tolerate threats or acts of violence that seek to undermine the democratic process."
It comes after a similar incident in Portland, Oregon, where police say an incendiary device was set off inside a ballot drop box close to a building hosting the Multnomah county elections division.
Meanwhile, a US Postal Service mail box containing a small number of ballots was set on fire in Phoenix, Arizona, last Thursday.
Police arrested a 35-year-old man who they said admitted to the crime while he was in custody. They also said he had told them his actions had not been politically motivated and he had committed the offense with the purpose of getting himself arrested.
In the last week before the election, Republican Donald Trump appealed to religious voters in the southern swing state of Georgia while Harris appeared at a rally in Ann Arbor, Michigan with her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, that featured a performance by singer-songwriter Maggie Rogers.
It comes as Trump faces pressure over his rally in New York, where a comedian called Puerto Rico a "floating island of garbage," prompting a backlash from Latino celebrities and criticism from both Republican and Democratic politicians. The Trump campaign has said the joke did not reflect their views.
Some 46 million Americans have voted already, according to the Election Lab at the University of Florida, including some 2.8 million people in Georgia and 1.9 million people in Michigan, where Harris arrived on Monday.
That trails the roughly 60 million people that had voted early by about this point in 2020, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Find Out More...