Election officials in Vancouver, Washington, are encouraging voters to check the status of their ballots after an arsonist set fire to a ballot box Monday morning, damaging hundreds of ballots a week before Election Day.

While incidents where bad actors target ballot drop boxes are rare, experts told ABC News that the infrastructure surrounding absentee voting over the past decade has been improved by election officials using 24-hour surveillance, fire suppression systems, and advanced ballot tracking software.

“These are the types of scenarios that election officials have been up at night thinking about for years and considering them as part of their contingency plans,” said Claire Woodall-Vogg, former executive director of the Milwaukee Election Commission. “Although it is very rare, it is definitely something your election official is considering.”

Monday’s arson attack – which destroyed hundreds of ballots in Vancouver, Washington, and three in Portland, Oregon – follows other incidents last week in Florida and Arizona in which ballots were damaged in transit. Phoenix authorities also arrested a man last week on arson charges for allegedly setting fire to a USPS collection mailbox, destroying five ballots, and federal prosecutors in Florida last week charged another man with allegedly destroying hundreds of election mailers, including at least one ballot box. a vote.

How can voters find out if their votes were affected?

Voters who suspect their vote may have been affected should contact their local election office to verify whether their ballot was received, according to Brian Hinkle, senior voting policy researcher at the Movement Advancement Project.

Forty-seven states offer free ballot tracking services that allow voters to confirm whether their ballot was mailed, received, and counted. In Washington’s Clark County, where Vancouver is located, voters can track their votes through the VoteWA online tool.

“If they don’t get a message that the ballots have been accepted to be counted or have even arrived at the county office to be accepted, they’ll know something is wrong,” said Steve Olsen, president of software company BallotTrax. The ballot tracking service covers 28% of American voters.

Whenever possible, election officials will attempt to contact voters they believe may be affected by an incident to ensure ballots have been received or to assist in replacing ballots. Some voters who request a new ballot may need to vote in person instead of voting by mail again, as the USPS recommends that voters mail their ballots by October 29 to ensure they arrive in time.

“In every state, in every legal system, there are systems in place to make sure that someone’s vote isn’t taken away for an offense like this,” Woodall-Vogg said.

How can election officials track individual ballots?

According to Olsen, election officials can track individual ballots using “smart mail barcodes” placed on envelopes that do not contain ballots.

“Voters can track their ballots the same way they track their package delivery,” Hinkle said.

Barcodes printed on ballot return envelopes, as well as on envelopes sent to voters, allow voters to track when their ballots were mailed, returned, and received by election officials.

The tracking technology cannot see how the ballot is filled out.

“Basically what we do is keep track of envelopes,” Olsen said. “We don’t have access to the ballot.”

BallotTrax works with election offices in 546 counties across the United States, covering 72 million voters and tracking more than 240 million ballots. Founded in 2009 to help the city of Denver with its elections, the company expanded tenfold in 2020 as much of the country switched to mail-in voting due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Individual counties foot the bill for the BallotTrax service, which allows voters to get free updates on their ballot status, according to Olsen. Election offices can continue to monitor ballots to detect problems even if the voter chooses not to do so.

Once the ballot reaches the local election office and is removed from the return envelope, the ballot will no longer be identified as belonging to a specific voter and the confidentiality of the vote will be maintained.

“Once the ballot is removed from the envelope with all the identification markings on it, it becomes anonymous at that point,” Olsen said.

What happens to damaged ballot papers?

If the ballot was damaged in transit but is still identifiable, election officials may attempt to reconfigure the ballot so it can be fed into the voting machine. Bipartisan teams are involved in a process known as “ballot duplication.”

“Election workers will redact the ballot to preserve voter intent and turn it into a clean new ballot,” Hinke said. he said.

If a voter suspects their ballot may have been damaged, they should contact their local election office to verify whether the ballot was received or whether they need to request a new ballot.

Are ballot boxes safe?

Despite recent high-profile incidents, polling stations are still one of the safest ways to vote, according to experts.

Most ballot boxes are tamper-proof, bolted to the floor, under 24-hour surveillance, and contain fire suppression systems. In most areas, ballots are collected by two-person teams.

“We have a chain of custody system so we know when we pick up the ballots and when we drop them off, and all the ballots have bar codes on them so they are safe,” George Dreckmann said. He had been doing survey work in Milwaukee for a long time. “So the mailbox system can be just as safe as putting it in the mail, and in some cases even safer.”

Drop boxes in many states have fire suppression systems that extinguish fires using powder instead of water, preventing further damage to ballots. While the fire suppression system failed to operate effectively during an arson attack in Clark County on Monday, election officials said the fire suppression system saved more than 400 ballots in neighboring Multnomah County, Oregon.

“These boxes are very secure and voters should be able to trust using them,” Hinkle said.