PUYALLUP — Just four days before the election, the sounds of hammering and welding reverberated through the 27,000-square-foot Puyallup facility where drop boxes found throughout the U.S. — including many found bolted down in Multnomah and Clark counties — are born.
Larry Olson, owner of the company, Laserfab, has been designing and redesigning the drop boxes since Pierce County first asked him to build one in 2009. Over the last 15 years, he has developed three models, the largest of which is a nearly 1,200-pound steel behemoth seen in cities like Seattle and Portland.
Besides some cosmetic damage caused by vehicles crashing into them, Olson’s ballot boxes — numbering nearly 1,200 in 89 counties and 15 states — have remained unscathed.
Until Monday.
In the early hours of the morning, fires erupted inside two drop boxes, in Portland and Vancouver, after someone placed incendiary devices next to them.
The Portland drop box, made by Laserfab, was hit first. Two fire-suppressant devices inside the box sensed the blaze and released a flame retardant powder in time for only three ballots to be damaged.
Vancouver voters were less lucky. The two fire suppressants inside that ballot box, made by Fort Knox Mailbox, a metal manufacturer based near Grants Pass, Ore., “didn’t perform as we expected,” said Clark County Auditor Greg Kimsey. That fire damaged 488 ballots, and possibly more were too burned to be recovered after the fire was extinguished, he said.
According to Multnomah and Clark county officials, both drop boxes contained fire-suppressant devices from the same brand, Stovetop FireStop. The devices, which are designed to prevent stove top grease fires, have become “the standard” for preventing fires inside ballot drop boxes across the U.S., Olson said.
The devices, however, are not intended to be used outside of home kitchens, said Craig Walters, the president of WilliamsRDM, which owns Stovetop FireStop.
In a statement Thursday, Walters said his company “strongly discourages our products being used in any manner other than what they are originally intended.”
But with no device on the market specifically designed to prevent fires inside ballot drop boxes, county election officials and drop box manufacturers are scrambling to think of ways to prevent the next fire from being as destructive.
“I always say, ‘You can build a 30-foot wall, but then somebody else builds a 31-foot ladder,’ “ Olson said, his arms resting on top of an unfinished ballot box inside his Puyallup facility. “If somebody is intent on disrupting an election somehow, they’re going to find a way.”
Designed for stovetops
The device that stands between most ballot packages and a fire is in a silver can that can fit in the palm of your hand.
On Friday, Olson demonstrated as he stuck the magnetized can to the interior of an unfinished ballot box. The underside of the can has a fuse that, once lit, burns up and causes the can to break apart, releasing a plume of flame retardant onto a fire below.
But the devices are designed to pour enough flame retardant to cover a standard kitchen stove top. Whether they can prevent fires inside ballot drop boxes — large, enclosed steel containers often filled with paper — has become less clear, Olson said.
Multnomah County Elections Director Tim Scott said the county isn’t looking into alternative devices, given that the ones in Portland deployed as intended. The county installed two Stovetop FireStop devices inside each ballot drop box to prevent “nuisance incidents,” like someone sliding inside a piece of flaming paper, added Multnomah County spokesperson Denis Theriault.
“The bottom line is our fire suppressants worked — they prevented serious damage from a highly technical, serious and unprecedented device,” Theriault said in an email Friday. “They are a best practice and that’s why we’ve used them.”
Elections officials in King and Clark counties were less certain.
“I think it’s fair to say everyone’s going to be looking at all of these (devices) after the election to make sure we have the best products on the market,” King County Elections Chief of Staff Kendall Hodson said Thursday by phone.
And Kimsey, the Clark County auditor, said he contacted the Washington Secretary of State’s Office after Monday’s fires to ask that they do research into alternative fire-suppression methods.
“We’re going to figure that out,” Kimsey said in a phone call Friday.
“What is this world coming to?”
Andrea Crisp, who co-owns Fort Knox Mailbox with her husband, said she is also open to redesigning their drop boxes with fires in mind.
“The main concept is security and trying to prevent people from getting in there,” Crisp said. “The fire was a new thing — we’ve never seen that happen before.”
On Wednesday, Portland Police Bureau spokesperson Mike Benner said investigators suspect a man between 30 and 40 years old, with “a wealth of experience in metal fabrication and welding,” placed the incendiary devices next to the two ballot boxes, and another in Vancouver on Oct. 8 that never went off. As of Friday, investigators had not yet found the man, whom they believe was driving a black or dark-colored 2001-04 Volvo S60 with no front license plates.
The New York Times and The Associated Press reported that the message “Free Gaza” was marked on all three incendiary devices, citing unnamed law enforcement officials. One of the officials said investigators are trying to determine whether the suspect is a pro-Palestinian activist or used the message “to sow discord,” The New York Times reported.
Crisp said she and her husband first created their company to protect mailboxes from being smashed, and later from theft. Manufacturing ballot drop boxes — essentially, larger versions of their steel mailboxes — was a natural fit, she said.
Crisp was scrolling social media on Monday when she saw a news clip of one of her company’s red ballot drop boxes smoldering in Vancouver. That box was a custom, 525-pound version they’d made for Clark County, she said.
“We were shocked. There was a ‘What is this world coming to?’ feeling,” she said.
According to Crisp, she and her husband hadn’t considered the possibility of a fire inside one of their drop boxes before this week. After Monday’s fires, however, they might work on fireproofing future models, she said.
“We care about the (elections) process and we want it to be safe and secure and fair,” she said. “We want people to go and vote and not have to worry about what happens to their ballot.”
Meanwhile, Olson said he has set up meetings with officials from three counties to discuss how they could prevent future fires. And he has heard from one company that manufactures exploding “fire extinguisher balls,” which powerfully release flame retardant powder in all directions when they detect a fire. The balls, if attached by a bracket hanging from the top of a drop box, could be more effective than the devices most counties currently use, he said.
The possibility of adapting the ballot drop box design should ease voters’ concerns, and is a normal part of the business, Olson said.
The design of his “big hunks of steel” changes after almost every major election, as county officials share ways they could be made more secure, he said. For Laserfab, that has meant making tweaks like a slanted roof, so rain doesn’t drip onto ballots as an election worker retrieves them.
Olson’s drop boxes are also designed so every county has a unique lock and key code, and any opening is only large enough to fit a single ballot envelope. The interiors are also painted gray, so ballots are more visible and won’t be missed by an election worker, he said.
While Monday’s fires were concerning, voters should still feel confident in using ballot drop boxes because of their design, and because of the people who “dedicate their professional lives to make sure our elections are free and fair,” Olson said.
“Our boxes are inanimate — they have no feelings,” he said. “What’s more disheartening than having to replace a box is having the people that work in elections come under attack.”
