- cross-posted to:
- politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world
State and federal authorities are investigating a deliberately set fire that destroyed ballots inside a drop box in southwest Washington on Monday morning.
Ballots typically have identifiers such as voter information or barcodes that help election officials match them to specific voters, allowing them to contact those whose ballots were compromised and ensure they can cast a new vote.
Voters who used the affected drop box after the last collection time are encouraged to contact the Clark County Auditor’s office to verify if their ballot was among those destroyed and to obtain a replacement (source)
So the onus is on the voters, meaning those votes are likely lost :/
I’m sure most of the people living there who recently dropped a ballot in that box will care enough to ask the same thing though.
I called the election board near me recently and learned my vote was deactivated because I changed registration, so my new ballot will be counted sooner but if I do nothing they’ll just count it on 15 Nov
I agree that almost everyone affected would WANT to vote again; most of the work of voting is deciding who to vote for, and they’ve already done that.
Another problem though is that not everyone affected will know that anything happened to their ballot.
But what other options are there? The ballots were destroyed, so there’s no way to know who to contact to let them know it happened.
Yeah, I don’t see any other option. I’m just saying it ain’t good.
If you are worried your mail in ballot is having issues, many states will allow you to cast a “provisional ballot” that only gets counted after they verify if your mail in ballot was processed.
Since the ballots hadn’t been collected, there’s no way for the state to know the identity of voters who dropped off ballots that were destroyed in the fire because those ballots were destroyed.