Burning ballot boxes and voter purges: the polling chaos that risks undermining the election

Pressure mounts on officials to ensure votes are all accounted for as election day looms

With the election just days away, concerns perpetuated by Republicans over votes being miscounted have reached fever pitch.
Ever since 2020, when Donald Trump corralled his supporters to “stop the steal” and an angry mob marched on the Capitol to protest against what they deemed to be a fraudulent election, further controversy was inevitable.
Four years on, Trump and many of his key allies continue to maintain that the 2020 election was stolen, ramping up pressure on election officials to ensure ballots are all accounted for.
With early voting already under way in many states, law enforcement officers are on red alert.
In Maricopa County, Arizona, a flashpoint for election fraud allegations in 2020, snipers have been deployed on the roofs at counting centres, while metal detectors are set to be installed at the entrances as drones hover overhead.
Colorado election officials have ordered bulletproof vests and installed bullet proof glass at polling stations in case violence breaks out. The same is true in Detroit, Michigan, and Atlanta.
Meanwhile, Philadelphia’s ballot-counting warehouse is now surrounded by fencing topped with barbed wire.
The enhanced security measures come after the FBI warned last month about a “dangerous increase in threats of violence directed at election officials”.
Here are all the major voting controversies in the election so far.
Ballot boxes in Washington State and Oregon were set alight within hours of each other on Oct 27, damaging hundreds of voter slips.
Incendiary devices were set off at both ballot drop boxes, located just miles apart, with one official calling it a “direct attack on democracy”.
Footage of the blaze in Vancouver, Washington, showed hundreds of ballots reduced to ashes after a fire suppression system failed to activate, officials said. Three were destroyed in Portland after the safety mechanism kicked into gear.
Police said they have identified a “suspect vehicle” connected to both blazes. The motive remains unclear, but one law enforcement official told NBC that the incendiary devices were marked “Free Gaza”.
Boxes containing hundreds of votes landed in the street after toppling from a moving truck in Florida on Oct 28, election department officials said.
An employee in Florida’s largest county, Miami-Dade, forgot to lock the back of their truck, causing containers holding ballots to fall out, the local elections department said.
A passing driver retrieved the packages from the road and returned them to the local police station. Election officials later confirmed that the ballots inside had been counted and that they were intact.
Miami-Dade elections department said the incident occurred due to “human error” and the driver was later sacked.
The Supreme Court allowed Virginia to purge 1,600 suspected non-citizens from voting.
Glenn Youngkin, the Republican governor, issued an executive order in August requiring daily checks of state documents in order to identify non-citizens.
Those identified were given two weeks to dispute their disqualification before being removed from the voter roll.
A case was brought against state officials claiming that some legitimate voters had been removed. Yet despite opposition from lower courts, the Supreme Court has upheld Mr Younkin’s order, causing 1,600 voters to be scrubbed off the electoral register.
Although it is illegal for non-citizens to cast a vote, studies have found that instances in which it happens are extremely rare.
Mail-in ballots in some Pennsylvania counties have been arriving sealed shut owing to high humidity levels, officials warned earlier this week.
The state department urged voters to contact their local county election office for recommendations on what to do if they cannot open the inner secrecy envelope in their ballot.
One official in Philadelphia recommended voters cut the envelope open, insert their completed ballot and then tape the envelope closed afterwards, The New York Times reported.
The number of voters affected in the key battleground state remains unclear, but it is essential that voters follow instructions as ballots left unsealed, known as “naked ballots” are invalid, state courts have said.
The Trump campaign has threatened to sue the Bucks County election board in Pennsylvania alleging that voters have been “turned away” from polling stations.
The lawsuit claimed that voters were “turned away, and forced by security to leave” while waiting in line to collect mail-in ballots in the key swing state.
The campaign called for a one-day extension to the mail-in ballot request deadline, which ended on Tuesday.
The County dismissed the claims, writing on X, formerly Twitter: “Contrary to what is being depicted on social media, if you are in line by 5pm for an on-demand mail-in ballot application, you will have the opportunity to submit your application for a mail-in ballot.”
It added that those in line applying for on-demand ballots were “briefly told they could not be accommodated”, but that they were ultimately allowed to submit their applications.
Republican groups have filed lawsuits across numerous states over claims of voter fraud. In Michigan, Nevada and North Carolina, the Republican National Committee has claimed election officials need to remove inactive or ineligible voters from their rolls.
In Nevada and Mississippi, the same group has sued to overturn rules that permit mail ballots that arrive after election day to be counted. A Mississippi court ruled in the committee’s favour this week, in a move which critics claim could set a precedent for legal challenges across the country.
In the key swing state of Georgia, Republicans have challenged the eligibility of more than 63,000 people to vote in the election after a new law was introduced in July making it easier for these challenges to be upheld.
The state’s election board has also approved separate rule requiring counties to hand-count the number of ballots cast at polling stations on election day, with critics warning the measure will cause delays and sow mistrust in the system.