The ballot drop boxes in Washington and Oregon both have fire suppression systems that are designed to activate when the temperature inside reaches a certain point, coating ballots inside with a fire-suppressing powder.
For unknown reasons, the system failed to prevent the destruction of hundreds of ballots in Vancouver, just across the Columbia River from Portland.
This is very obviously easier said than done, but having mail be reliable seems like a much better way to safeguard this kind of voting, than trying to install massive security around these specialised boxes. Or even having staffed early voting centres would be better than an unattended box.
I’m just looking on (from Australia) and feeling like the way voting is managed in US federal elections is unnecessarily difficult and complicated.
Every state has its own rules, and administers its own vote for a federal election?? (I understand why historically, but this is a really dumb way to run things). Some states use electronic voting, and we have seen what a bad idea this is in terms of ability to claim voter fraud. Even if electronic voting were 100% secure, which it isn’t - it’s way more vulnerable to large scale attack, it’s simply easier to claim fraud when it’s inner-workings a black box. And early voting is done in specific unattended ballot drop boxes, which so, so obviously would become a target.
And this lack of coherent, federally managed elections, also means some states just literally provide way too few places to vote.
Y’all flying by the seat of your pants, and it’s scary, considering how much control over the world, and specifically my country, the US has.
Please advocate for voting reform, it should be the number one priority above all others, because without it, the political system in the US is going to keep being way too fragile. And again, this shit affects us all because of US imperialism.