The FBI and local police are investigating a major arson incident after ballot boxes in Vancouver, Washington and Portland, Oregon, were targeted with incendiary devices early Monday morning, just eight days before election day in the United States. No one was apparently injured in either incident, and as of this writing police have yet to make an arrest or release a motive.
The two attacks took place one day after Trump’s fascist rally in New York City on Sunday, which included incitements to violence prior, during and after the final day of the election on November 5.
The first attack occurred early Monday morning in Portland, Oregon. According to police, they received a call at 3:00 a.m. that the ballot box located roughly a block away from the Multnomah County Elections Office was smoking. By the time police arrived, private security personnel located on-site and a fire suppressant device inside the ballot box were apparently able to snuff out the flames, leaving only three ballots destroyed.
Roughly an hour after the initial call, a second arson attack was reported targeting a ballot box in Vancouver, Washington. In a statement released Monday, Washington Rep. Marie Gluesekamp Perez (Democrat) wrote that the fire at the Fisher’s Landing Transit Center resulted “in the destruction of hundreds of ballots.”
For the second election in a row, Gluesekamp Perez, co-chair of the centrist “Blue Dog Coalition,” will be challenged for her House seat by Republican Joe Kent, an ex-Special Forces soldier and ardent defender of Trump’s “MAGA” agenda and his “stolen election” lies. In the 2022 race, Gluesenkamp Perez defeated Kent by fewer than 3,000 votes, in part due to a 28-point margin in the “precincts surrounding the Fisher’s Landing drop box” The Oregonian reported.
In a joint press conference Monday, Vancouver and Portland police indicated they believed the attacks were related to each other and to a previous attack on October 8. In the first incident, a caller reported seeing fire/smoke rising from a ballot box. When the police arrived, they located an incendiary device next to the box. No ballots were apparently damaged in the first incident.
Police released photographs in the afternoon showing what they said was an identical Volvo sedan spotted at both of the targeted drop boxes in Vancouver and Portland.
While no motive has been given yet by police, the city of Portland has specifically and repeatedly been the subject of former President Donald Trump’s fascist vitriol. Following the police murder of George Floyd in 2020 and subsequent mass protests, Trump proactively deployed federal agents, including heavily armed BORTAC (Border Patrol Tactical Unit) thugs, to terrorize, kidnap and assault Portland protesters throughout the summer.
The arson attacks in the Pacific Northwest follow a separate ballot burning incident that occurred last week in Phoenix, Arizona. Last Thursday, October 24, police arrested Dieter Klofkorn, 35, following a fire at a free-standing US Postal Office mailbox that damaged an estimated 20 ballots.
According to police, Klofkorn, while in custody, stated that he committed the arson because he “wanted to be arrested” and that he did not do it for political reasons. Klofkorn is currently being held on one felony count of Arson of Property.
Phoenix police conducted a major operation last week in connection to the targeted shooting of Democratic Party offices in Maricopa county. Jeffrey Michael Kelly, 60, is facing multiple serious felony charges after being arrested last week in connection with the shootings, which began in September and continued through October. The office was targeted three times, forcing Democrats to close it earlier this month.
Last week, police and federal agents raided Kelly’s home in Phoenix where they discovered more than 120 guns and over 250,000 rounds of ammunition. During the sweep of Kelly’s home, AZ Central reporters on the scene stated that they heard the words “machine gun” and “silencers,” while court documents indicate Kelly also possessed a “grenade launcher.”
The paper reported that during Kelly’s initial court appearance last Wednesday, a prosecutor claimed agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives also seized “numerous silencers, scopes for various levels of distance ... and body armor.”
Noting the massive arsenal Kelly, a retired aerospace engineer, had amassed, Maricopa County prosecutor Neha Bhatia said, “The state and law enforcement believes that this person was preparing to commit an act of mass casualty. ... With the guns he had his progression of violence was escalating.”
In addition to targeting Democratic Party offices with gunfire on three separate occasions, Tempe police have also accused Kelly of hanging “suspicious bags of white powder” lined “with razor blades” on Democratic Party political signs in Ahwatukee Foothills, an affluent village in Phoenix. The white substance was later revealed to be baking powder.