(DENVER) — More than 700 homes were under evacuation orders near the town of Divide, Colorado, as a wildfire burned uncontained nearby, local law enforcement said Monday.
The so-called Highland Lake Fire had burned about 90 acres by 7 p.m. on Monday and was completely uncontained, Teller County Sheriff Jason Mikesell told reporters during a news conference.
A local disaster emergency was declared. One structure had been destroyed by Monday evening, the county said in an update.
“You’re going to see everybody throw everything we possibly can at this thing, starting early in the morning,” Mikesell said.
The sheriff’s office was requesting the aid of multiple agencies around the surrounding region, as they were expecting high winds, which may help the fire spread amid red flag conditions. Those winds were expected to be sustained at about 20 mph overnight, before strengthening to about 50 mph on Tuesday, he said.
The evacuation area included Cedar Mountain North to Golden Bell, Wayward Wind, Snowhill, Aspen Village, Broken Wheel, Alpine View, Beaver Lake Circle, Beaver Lake Placeand Star View Trail, the county said.
More homes were expected to be evacuated, Mikesell said.
“We’ll have more of an assessment tomorrow, but we want to get on this fire very quickly and be super aggressive with it,” he said.
(LONDON) — A woman who went missing more than a week ago in the wilderness has been found alive suffering from a snakebite, officials said.
The 48-year-old female hiker, who hasn’t been publicly identified, went missing in the Snowy Mountains region in the southern part of New South Wales in Australia on Monday, Oct. 21.
Her disappearance was reported to officers attached to the Monaro Police District who “immediately commenced inquiries into her whereabouts,” according to a statement from New South Wales Police Force on Sunday.
“A command post was established at the Kiandra Courthouse, on the Snowy Mountains Highway, Kiandra and a search was launched,” authorities said. “The wide-scale search involved officers attached to Monaro Police District with assistance from the Mounted Unit, Dog Unit, SES, National Parks and Wildlife Service, Rural Fire Service and a Surf Life Saving Helicopter. Members of the public also assisted.”
After nearly a week surviving on her own in challenging and rugged bushland terrain, the missing and injured woman was found at approximately 4:50 p.m. local time on Sunday by a National Parks and Wildlife officer on the Nungar Creek Trail at Kiandra, NSW police said.
“She was treated at the scene by NSW Ambulance paramedics for exposure and what is believed to be a snake bite, before she was taken to Cooma District Hospital in a stable condition,” police continued.
It was unclear if the woman was on her own or if she became separated from a group when she went missing.
“Police would like to thank those involved in the multi-agency search, members of the public and the media for their assistance.”
(WASHINGTON) — Election officials in Vancouver, Washington, are encouraging voters to check the status of their absentee ballots after an arsonist lit a ballot drop box on fire on Monday morning, damaging hundreds of ballots one week before Election Day.
While incidents of bad actors targeting ballot drop boxes are rare, experts told ABC News that the infrastructure surrounding absentee voting over the last decade has allowed election officials to be prepared for such incidents, through the use of 24-hour surveillance, fire suppression systems, and advanced ballot tracking software.
“These are the types of scenarios that election officials are staying up at night thinking about and have been thinking about for years and as part of their contingency planning,” said Claire Woodall-Vogg, the former executive director of the Milwaukee Election Commission. “While it’s very rare, it’s something that your election official has definitely thought about.”
Monday’s arson attack — which destroyed hundreds of ballots in Vancouver, Washington and three in Portland, Oregon — follows other incidents last week when ballots in Florida and Arizona were damaged in transit. Phoenix officials also arrested a man for arson last week after he allegedly lit a fire inside a USPS collection mailbox, destroying five ballots, and federal prosecutors in Florida charged another man last week for allegedly disposing of hundreds of pieces of election mail, including at least one ballot.
Here’s what to know about dealing with a ballot that’s been damaged.
How can voters find out if their ballot is impacted?
Voters who suspect their ballot might be impacted should contact their local election office to confirm if their ballot has been received, according to Brian Hinkle, senior voting policy researcher at the Movement Advancement Project.
Forty-seven states offer free ballot tracking services, allowing voters to confirm if their ballots have been mailed, received and counted. In Clark County, Washington — where Vancouver is located — voters can track their ballots through the VoteWA online tool.
“If they don’t receive a message that their ballot has been accepted for counting or even received by the county office to be accepted, they’re going to know something’s wrong,” said Steve Olsen, the president of BallotTrax, a software company whose ballot tracking service covers 28% of American voters.
When possible, election officials will also attempt to contact any voter they believe may be impacted by an incident to ensure their ballots are received or to help with a replacement ballot. Because the USPS recommends that voters mail their ballot by Oct. 29 to ensure it is received in time, some voters who request replacement ballots may need to vote in person rather than attempt to vote by mail again.
“There are systems in place in every state, with every legal system, to make sure that someone’s vote wouldn’t be taken away from them by such a criminal act,” said Woodall-Vogg.
How are election officials able to track individual ballots?
According to Olsen, election officials are able to track individual ballots by using “intelligent mail barcodes” that are embedded in envelopes for absentee ballots.
“Voters can track their ballots similarly to how they would track package delivery,” said Hinkle.
The barcodes — which are printed on the envelopes sent to voters, as well as the return envelopes for the ballots themselves — allow voters to track when their absentee ballot is mailed out, sent back, and received by election officials.
The tracking technology cannot see how a ballot has been filled out.
“Basically, what we’re doing is tracking the envelopes,” said Olsen. “We have no access to the ballot.”
BallotTrax works with election offices in 546 counties across the United States, covering 72 million voters and tracking over 240 million ballots. Created in 2009 to assist the city of Denver its elections, the company expanded tenfold in 2020 when large swaths of the country moved to mail-in voting as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Individual counties foot the bill for the BallotTrax service, which allows voters to opt-in to receive free updates about their ballot status, according to Olsen. Even if a voter does not opt in to tracking, election offices can still track ballots to identify issues.
Once a ballot makes it to a local election office and is removed from its return envelope, the ballot is no longer identifiable to a particular voter, preserving the anonymity of the vote.
“Once the ballot is pulled out of the envelope, where all of the identification marks are on it, it becomes anonymous at that point,” Olsen said.
What happens to damaged ballots?
If a ballot is damaged in transit but still recognizable, election officials can attempt to remake the ballot so that it can be fed into a voting machine. Bipartisan teams are involved in the process known as “ballot duplication.”
“The election workers will reconstruct the ballot to preserve the voters’ intent and translate it onto a clean new ballot,” Hinke said.
If a voter suspects their ballot might be damaged, they should contact their local election office to confirm if their ballot has been received or if they need to request a replacement ballot.
Are ballot drop boxes safe?
Despite the recent high-profile incidents, ballot drop boxes are still one of the most secure ways to cast a ballot, according to experts.
Most ballot drop boxes are tamper proof, bolted to the ground, under 24-hour surveillance, and include fire suppression systems. In most areas, the ballots themselves are picked up by two-person teams.
“We have a chain-of-custody system in place so that we know when we picked up the ballots and when we dropped them off, and all the ballots have barcodes on them, so that they’re secure,” said George Dreckmann, a longtime poll worker in Milwaukee. “So the drop box system is as safe as putting it in the mail, and in some cases, might even be safer.”
Drop boxes in many states have fire suppression systems that extinguish fires using powder rather than water, preventing further damage to the ballots. While the fire suppression system failed to work effectively during Monday’s arson attack in Clark County, election officials credited the fire suppression system with saving over 400 ballots in neighboring Multnomah County, Oregon.
“These boxes are very secure, and voters should be able to trust using them,” said Hinkle.
(TALLAHASSEE, F.L.) — In just one week, voters in Florida will head to the polls to decide whether to enshrine abortion rights in the Florida constitution, through a ballot measure that Gov. Ron DeSantis and his administration have spent months fighting in the courts.
If passed, Amendment 4 — officially titled “The Amendment to Limit Government Interference with Abortion” — would block any law from restricting an abortion before fetal viability, which is typically around 24 weeks, according to experts. The amendment would repeal the state’s current six-week abortion ban that was signed into law after Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022.
Florida is one of 10 states that will have reproductive rights-related questions on the ballot, after the overturning of Roe v. Wade left the issue up to the states.
A recent New York Times/Siena College poll found that 46% of those Floridians polled support the measure, while 38% are against it, with 16% refusing to answer or saying they don’t know. To pass on Nov. 5, the ballot measure will require the approval of 60% of those casting votes.
The governor and his allies have been waging an intense campaign against the ballot initiative.
“When you’re dealing with constitutional amendments, your default should always be no,” DeSantis said at a press conference last week, where he was joined by a dozen doctors. “You can always alter normal policies and legislation. Once it’s in the constitution, that’s forever. You really have zero chance of ever changing it.”
Earlier this month, the Florida Department of Health sent letters to television stations across the state — including ABC-affiliated stations — asking them not to air an ad supporting the ballot initiative and threatening criminal charges against broadcasters that did not comply. The ad featured a Florida mother describing how she was diagnosed with brain cancer two years ago, when she was 20 weeks pregnant.
“The doctors knew that if I did not end my pregnancy, I would lose my baby, I would lose my life, and my daughter would lose her mom,” Florida resident Caroline Williams said in the ad, saying that she believes she would be dead if she had been diagnosed under the sate’s current six-week abortion ban, which went into effect earlier this year.
After Floridians Protecting Freedom, the group behind the ballot initiative, sued the state for threatening “criminal proceedings” against the broadcast stations, a federal judge issued a restraining order against Florida’s surgeon general, prohibiting the Department of Health from threatening the stations.
“To keep it simple for the State of Florida: it’s the First Amendment, stupid,” U.S. District Judge Mark Walker wrote in the ruling.
John Wilson, the Department of Health attorney who signed the letters to the television stations, resigned two weeks ago, stating in a signed affidavit that attorneys for DeSantis wrote the letters and directed him to send them under his name.
“I resigned from my position as General Counsel in lieu of complying with directives … to send out further correspondence to the media outlets,” Wilson said in the affidavit. “The right of broadcasters to speak freely is rooted in the First Amendment. Threats against broadcast stations for airing content that conflicts with the government’s views are dangerous and undermine the fundamental principle of free speech.”
Critics of DeSantis say the letter threatening broadcasters may not have been his administration’s only attempt at intimidation.
Last month, two Florida residents reported that law enforcement from the Office of Election Crimes & Security, a unit created by DeSantis in 2022, knocked on their doors and asked them about petitions they had signed to get the amendment on the November ballot, the Miami Herald reported.
“I had indeed signed a petition seeking to have the right to an abortion placed on the ballot in Florida,” Isaac Menasche, one of the residents, said in a Facebook post. “The experience left me shaken. What troubled me was [the officer] had a folder on me containing my personal information.”
DeSantis defended the actions by the Election Crimes unit, saying at a press conference last month that there were “a lot of complaints” about one group that was supporting Amendment 4.
“They’re doing what they’re supposed to do,” DeSantis said of the Elections Crimes unit. “They’re following the law.”
The Election Crimes unit also released a report last month alleging that Floridians Protecting Freedom committed petition fraud to reach the 891,523 signatures needed to place the amendment on the ballot. The group has denied any wrongdoing.
“These lawsuits, coming on the heels of the State of Florida’s latest attempt to undermine Floridians’ right to vote on Amendment 4, are desperate,” said Lauren Brenzel, director of the “Yes on 4” campaign supporting the amendment. “Ask yourself, why is this happening now — over half a year after over 997,000 petitions were verified by the state of Florida and with less than a month until the election — that these anti-abortion extremists want to relitigate the petition-collection process?”
“It’s because our campaign is winning and the government and its extremist allies are trying to do everything they can to stop Floridians from having the rights they deserve,” Brenzel said.
(WASHINGTON) — Vice President Kamala Harris is set to make her final case for her bid for the presidency on Washington, D.C.’s Ellipse on Tuesday where she is expected to give an optimistic and hopeful message that’s focused on moving forward, according to a senior Harris campaign official.
Standing in front of the White House, Harris will offer a split screen and urge voters to “turn the page” on former President Trump’s era by pledging to put country over party, the senior campaign official said. About 20,000 people are expected to attend the event, according to an approved permit from the National Park Service.
Harris has adamantly said that the speech’s location on the National Mall — the same spot where Trump delivered remarks prior to the Jan.6, 2021, attacks on the U.S. Capitol — was to remind Americans of their choice between Harris and Trump and who would go on to the White House.
“I would and do think about that place more in the context of what will be behind me, which is the White House. And I’m doing it there, because I think it is very important for the American people to see and think about who will be occupying that space on Jan. 20,” Harris recently said to CBS News’ Norah O’Donnell.
“The reality of it is that most Americans can visualize the Oval Office. We’ve seen it on television, and this is a real scenario. It’s either going to be Donald Trump or it’s going to be me sitting behind the resolute desk in the Oval Office.”
With a week until Election Day, both Harris and Trump are working to make their final appeals to undecided voters in what is expected to be a close contest.
Harris’ campaign said she plans to paint Trump as someone who is consumed by his grievances and an endless desire for retribution, highlighting his pledge to go after those on his “enemies list” and how it contrasts with Harris’ focus on her “to-do list.” It’s a message she often incorporates into her stump speech.
“He is full of grievances. He is full of dark language that is about retribution and revenge, and so the American people have a choice. It is either going to be that, or it’ll be me there, focused on my to-do list, focused on the American people, and getting through that list of goals and plans to improve the lives of the American people,” Harris said to reporters on Sunday while campaigning in Philadelphia.
Her closing argument will highlight what she claims is a desire for Americans to “turn the page” from Trump by stressing her plans and priorities for the country, namely the economy. The vice president has promised to bring down costs and prioritize the middle class in her “opportunity economy.”
Following her speech on the Ellipse, Harris plans to take this message on the road to while crisscrossing through battleground states in the campaign’s final days. The events will be centered along a get-out-the-vote concert series.
“I’m spending time in all communities to make sure that they hear directly from me, so they can judge for themselves in a way that is unfiltered. And I’m going to continue doing that. I am leaving nothing on the field in this election, leaving nothing on the field,” Harris said in an interview with MSNBC earlier this month.
(LONDON) — North Korea’s Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui left Pyongyang on Monday night for an official visit to Russia, North Korean state-controlled media reported, as the U.S. and NATO again denounced growing military cooperation between the two neighbors.
The Korean Central News Agency said Choe and her entourage departed Pyongyang International Airport on Monday, with Moscow’s ambassador to the country Alexander Matsegora among those who saw the delegation off.
The visit “is taking place within the framework of a strategic dialogue — following an agreement to enhance ties reached by the leaders of our countries during the June 2024 summit,” a foreign ministry statement said.
Russia’s state-run Tass news agency said Choe arrived in the Pacific port city of Vladivostok on Tuesday and would head to Moscow on Wednesday, citing a diplomatic source.
The visit comes as Western concerns grow about the presence of North Korea troops in Russia ahead of their expected deployment to reinforce Moscow’s troops fighting Ukrainian forces in eastern Ukraine and western Russia.
President Joe Biden on Monday commented on the situation after casting his vote for next week’s elections in Delaware.
“It’s very dangerous, very dangerous,” Biden told reporters.
Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh told reporters at a Monday briefing that the U.S. believes there are now 10,000 North Korean troops in Russia, up from the American estimate of 3,000 given by National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby last week.
The troops have been sent “to train in eastern Russia” and “will probably augment Russian forces near Ukraine over the next several weeks,” she said.
Singh said some of Pyongyang’s troops are moving towards Russia’s western Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces established a foothold in August.
“A portion of those soldiers have already moved closer to Ukraine, and we are increasingly concerned that Russia intends to use these soldiers in combat or to support combat operations against Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk Oblast, near the border with Ukraine,” she said.
Singh — like Kirby and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin last week — framed the deployment as a sign of Moscow’s weakness.
“This would mark a further escalation and highlights President [Vladimir] Putin’s increasing desperation, as Russia has suffered extraordinary casualties on the battlefield, and an indication that Putin may be in more trouble than people realize,” she said.
“He’s tin-cupping to the DPRK, Iran, because he has failed to meet those battlefield objectives,” Singh added, using the acronym of the country’s official name — the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller, meanwhile, said the U.S. has raised the issue with long-time North Korea backer China, to “make clear that we are concerned about it, and that they ought to be concerned about this destabilizing action by two of its neighbors, Russia and North Korea.”
“I’ll let them speak for themselves, but we have been making clear to China for some time that they have an influential voice in the region,” Miller added. “And they should be concerned about steps that Russia has taken to undermine stability. They should be concerned about steps that North Korea has taken to undermine stability and security.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Tuesday morning he had spoken with South Korean President Yoon Seok-yeol to discuss the involvement of North Korean troops in the war.
“There is only one conclusion — this war is internationalized and goes beyond the borders of two states,” Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram. The president said he provided Yoon with “fresh data” on the deployment of 3,000 North Korean soldiers to Russian training grounds close to the front.
Zelenskyy said the North Korean force will eventually grow to 12,000 troops — the highest estimate so far given by Ukraine, the U.S. or South Korea.
The two presidents “agreed to strengthen the exchange of intelligence and expertise” and to “develop an action strategy and a list of countermeasures in response to escalation” in collaboration with “mutual partners.”
Yoon said on Monday that a South Korean delegation will visit Ukraine this week to share information about the deployment of North Korean troops to Russia and discuss further cooperation with Kyiv.
The South Korean Yonhap news agency reported Tuesday that the country’s National Intelligence Service told lawmakers that some of the North Korean generals and troops sent to Russia may have already moved to the front lines.
Yonhap said Seoul expects 10,900 North Korean troops to be sent to Russia by December.
ABC News’ Ellie Kaufman, Matthew Seyler, Justin Gomez and Max Uzol contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — In recent campaign speeches, former President Donald Trump has repeatedly floated an eye-catching idea: the elimination of individual income taxes.
The proposal follows a string of other tax cuts put forward by Trump, including the removal of taxes on car-loan payments, social security benefits and servers’ tips. But a potential elimination of personal income taxes for all Americans goes much further.
When podcast host Joe Rogan asked Trump last week whether he was serious about the new plan, Trump said, “Yeah, sure, why not?”
The U.S. would pay for the lost tax revenue with far-reaching tariffs, Trump said.
“We will not allow the enemy to come in and take our jobs and take our factories and take our workers and take our families, unless they pay a big price — and the big price is tariffs,” Trump added.
The individual income tax currently accounts for roughly half of the $5 trillion in revenue that the federal government brings in each year.
It is unclear whether Trump’s proposal would also include the elimination of payroll taxes and corporate income taxes. Those duties account for another 40% of U.S. tax revenue, according to the Tax Policy Center.
“Even in its smallest form, it would be a pretty substantial change from current policy,” Marc Goldwein, senior vice president and senior policy director at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, told ABC News.
But he acknowledged that the details about how that proposal would actually work have been scarce. “We don’t have a full proposal,” Goldwein said.
In response to ABC News’ request for comment, the Trump campaign referenced the tax cuts enacted during his first term. But the campaign did not comment directly on his newer proposal of eliminating the individual income tax.
“President Trump passed the largest tax CUTS for working families in history and will make them permanent when he is back in the White House in addition to ending taxes on tips for service workers and ending taxes on Social Security for our seniors,” Karoline Leavitt, national press secretary for the Trump campaign, told ABC News.
It would be all but impossible to make up for the lost revenue with increased tariffs, experts told ABC News.
On the campaign trail, Trump has promised a sharp escalation of tariffs during his first term. He has proposed tariffs of between 60% and 100% on Chinese goods.
Envisioning a far-reaching policy, Trump has proposed a tax of between 10% and 20% on all imported products. Earlier this month, he told the audience at the Economic Club of Chicago that such a tariff could reach as high as 50%.
Last year, the U.S. imported about $3.8 trillion worth of goods, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis found. To generate the same amount of revenue currently brought in by the individual income tax, a tariff would have needed to be set at about 70%, Alan Auerbach, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who focuses on tax policy, told ABC News.
However, a tariff of such magnitude would significantly reduce U.S. trade, slashing the total amount of imported goods and, in turn, reducing tax revenue.
“It wouldn’t be feasible,” Auerbach said.
Erica York, a senior economist and research director at the Tax Foundation, echoed that view. “It’s mathematically impossible,” York said.
Replacing the individual income tax with tariffs would also shift a greater share of the tax burden onto low- and middle-income households, experts said.
The top 50% of earners accounted for nearly 98% of all federal income taxes in 2021, according to the Tax Foundation. The bottom 50%, in turn, made up about 2% of income tax payments.
Higher tariffs are widely expected to raise prices of consumer goods, since foreign producers typically pass the cost of higher taxes onto customers. As a result, the costs of higher tariffs would fall evenly across U.S. households, since all Americans purchase consumer goods.
In some cases, low- and middle-income earners would pay a higher proportion of the cost burden, since consumer spending often makes up a higher share of their overall budget than it does for their well-off counterparts, Goldwein said.
“Tariffs are at best a flat tax and more likely a regressive one,” Goldwein added.
Trump would have some latitude in setting and implementing tariffs, experts previously told ABC News.
But his proposal to eliminate the personal income tax would require support from both houses of Congress.
“Trump can’t just eliminate the individual income tax,” York said. But, she added, Trump may seek to negotiate tax cuts in 2025, when many of the provisions associated with his signature tax reform law are set to expire.
“Trump could possibly negotiate further tax cuts to be added to those,” York said. “But I don’t see a situation where Congress would align with this swap between the income tax and tariffs.”
(MINNEAPOLIS, Mn) Police in Minneapolis arrested a man early Monday morning on charges of second-degree attempted murder for allegedly shooting his neighbor following a year-long dispute.
The arrest came after an intense standoff between a SWAT team and the suspect, 54-year-old John Herbert Sawchak, who surrendered peacefully on Monday, according to police.
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, whose office is prosecuting the case, confirmed to ABC News on Monday that Sawchak is in custody and is being held on suspicion of second-degree attempted murder after allegedly shooting his neighbor, Davis Moturi, on the evening of Oct. 23, 2024.
“It was a very traumatic moment,” Moturi told ABC News in an interview on Sunday from his hospital bed. “Just to realize that like, you’ve been injured like that. Not only, not only shot, but shot in your neck and the people are fighting to save your life. And you don’t know if you can make it.”
According to a probable cause statement obtained by ABC News, Moturi’s’ wife told police that her husband was shot while he was outside pruning a tree near the couple’s property line. The incident was captured on surveillance video that was obtained by ABC News.
The suspect allegedly told Davis Moturi, “Touch my tree again and I’ll kill you,” Moturi’s wife told police, according to the probable cause statement.
Police said that the incident came after a year-old dispute between Moturi and Sawchak.
“Defendant has made countless other threats and engaged in almost constant harassment of the victim and his wife since they purchased their home in September 2023,” the probable cause statement said, referencing at least 19 other incidents of “vandalism, property destruction/theft, harassment, hate speech, verbal threats and threatened physical assaults” – the oldest of which dates back to October 2023.
“Even before [the shooting], it had a major impact on my life,” Moturi told ABC News, referencing the ongoing dispute with his neighbor.
According to charging documents obtained by ABC News, Sawchak is facing three additional felony charges for stalking, harassment and assault.
Minneapolis Police Department Chief Brian O’Hara said during an early morning press conference on Monday that there were multiple warrants out for Sawchak’s arrest, but he evaded police for four days and refused to emerge from his home.
“Minneapolis police exhausted all of our efforts to peacefully bring this situation to a resolution without prior to escalating the use of force with a SWAT team and special tactics,” O’Hara said.
“Thankfully, our officers were able to peacefully arrest this individual tonight after several hours of a SWAT operation,” he added.
ABC News’ attempts to reach out directly to Sawchak were unsuccessful and it is unclear if he has retained an attorney. Hennepin County District Attorney Mary Moriarty told ABC News on Monday that Sawchak is in custody and is scheduled to make his first appearance in court on Tuesday afternoon.
O’Hara said on Monday that police made “dozens of attempts” to arrest Sawchak since April but “were unable to make contact with this individual.”
O’Hara acknowledged that law enforcement “failed” to protect Moturi in this case.
“We were unsuccessful,” O’Hara said, in reference to prior attempts to arrest the suspect. “And so in that sense, yes, we failed. We failed this victim. He should not have been shot. But I will say this – we had no reason to suspect that he would shoot … the neighbor from inside the house.”
(PORTLAND, Ore.) — Ballot boxes in Oregon and Washington were set on fire with incendiary devices early Monday in what authorities believe are connected incidents, police said.
The two arson incidents, which occurred near the Oregon-Washington border, are also believed to be connected to a third ballot box incident that occurred earlier this month in Vancouver, Washington, police said.
In the first reported incident on Monday, Portland police responded to a fire at a ballot box around 3:30 a.m. local time, police said. Security at the Multnomah County Elections Division responded and extinguished the fire, officials said.
“Our officers quickly determined that there was an incendiary device that had been attached to the ballot box, and that is what ignited this fire,” Portland Police Bureau spokesperson Mike Benner said at a press briefing on Monday.
The bureau’s explosive disposal unit cleared the device, police said.
Fire suppressant prevented further damage and protected “virtually all the ballots,” though three were damaged, the Multnomah County Elections Division said in a press release.
Elections officials will contact the three impacted voters so they can receive replacement ballots, the division said.
“We have multiple systems and security measures in place to ensure your ballot is safe,” Multnomah County Elections Director Tim Scott said in a statement.
Oregon Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade said the limited impact to ballots “shows that our systems are safe and secure.”
“Make no mistake, an attack on a ballot box is an attack on our democracy and completely unacceptable,” Griffin-Valade said in a statement. “Whatever the motivation behind this incident, there is no justification for any attempt to disenfranchise voters.”
No other ballot boxes or official drop sites in Multnomah County were affected, the division said.
The Portland Fire Investigations Unit is investigating.
About a half hour later, around 4 a.m. local time, officers in Vancouver, Washington, responded to a report of a ballot box that was smoking and on fire, police said.
“Officers arrived and located a suspicious device next to the box,” which was on fire, the Vancouver Police Department said in a statement.
The fire was extinguished, and members of the Metro Explosive Disposal Unit safely collected the device, police said.
“Hundreds” of ballots are believed to have been damaged on Monday, though an official number has not yet been determined, Clark County Auditor Greg Kimsey said at the press briefing.
Fire suppression devices are also installed in ballot drop boxes in the county, though they do not appear to have worked well, said Kimsey, who added that they’re going to try to obtain better fire suppression devices.
The Clark County Auditor’s Office will be working to ensure impacted voters have replacement ballots in time, officials said.
“We take the safety of our election workers seriously and will not tolerate threats or acts of violence that seek to undermine the democratic process,” Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs said in a statement. “I strongly denounce any acts of terror that aim to disrupt lawful and fair elections in Washington state. Despite this incident, I have complete confidence in our county elections official’s ability to keep Washington’s elections safe and secure for all voters.”
Monday’s incident is similar to an incident that occurred on Oct. 8 in Vancouver, in which a ballot box was smoking and on fire with a “device” next to it, Vancouver interim Police Chief Troy Price said during the press briefing.
“We do believe the incident here [in Portland] is connected to the two incidents in Vancouver,” Benner said.
Police have identified a suspect vehicle, a possible Volvo that was captured on surveillance footage near the ballot box in Portland, Benner said.
A motive remains unclear, Portland Assistant Chief Amanda McMillan said.
“We do know that acts like this are targeted and they’re intentional, and we’re concerned about that intentional act trying to affect the election process,” she said at the press briefing on Monday. “We’re dedicated to stopping that kind of behavior, and we’re working toward that today.”
The FBI is also investigating the incidents “to determine who is responsible,” an agency spokesperson said.
Both Oregon and Washington are one of several vote-by-mail states, with ballots returned by mail or at an official drop box. Washington also has voting centers open to accept ballots.
(NEW YORK) — Former president Donald Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday was framed as his “closing argument” in his bid for the White House and as a way to bring a diverse group of supporters together.
Instead, it included divisive language and racist insults aimed at some of the very voters Trump has been working to attract.
Causing the most backlash were comments from comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who made explicit jokes about Latinos and turned to Trump recently calling the United States the “garbage can” of the world.
With just about a week until Election Day, the rally was an opportunity for the Trump campaign to connect with Hispanic and Black Americans, voters the Trump campaign is attempting to court in deep-Blue New York.
His campaign instead was forced to try to respond to distance Trump from the comedian the campaign had chosen to speak at his high-profile event.
“This joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign,” Trump campaign’s senior adviser Danielle Alvarez wrote in a statement to ABC News about the “island of garbage remark.”
Trump Campaign National Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt added on Fox News on Monday morning that Hinchcliffe’s joke was in “poor taste.”
Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign immediately slammed Hinchcliffe’s comments, pointing to how Harris would work to support Puerto Rico — a key voting bloc that Harris targeted during a stop in swing state Pennsylvania over the weekend.
“Puerto Ricans deserve better,” she said in a Sunday video post on X.
The backlash to Hinchcliffe’s comments kicked up in Puerto Rico from both sides of the political aisle. Jenniffer Gonzalez, a Republican who is running to be the island’s governor, called the comedian’s comments “despicable, inappropriate and disgusting.” The Republican Party of Puerto Rico also denounced Hinchcliffe’s comments, with party chair Angel Cintrón writing that they were “unfortunate, ignorant, and entirely reprehensible.”
Hinchcliffe responded to criticism from Harris’ running mate, Gov. Tim Walz — who ripped the comedian for the “island of garbage comments.
“These people have no sense of humor. Wild that a vice presidential candidate would take time out of his ‘busy schedule’ to analyze a joke taken out of context to make it seem racist,” Hinchcliffe wrote on social media. “I love Puerto Rico and vacation there. I made fun of everyone…watch the whole set.”
While Puerto Rico does not vote for president in the general election since it is a U.S. territory, the Republican Party of Puerto Rico held a primary in April as part of its presidential nominating process. That primary was won by Trump, who netted the territory’s delegates.
The controversy is not a first for Hinchcliffe, who has a history of making racially charged jokes.
In 2021, he came under fire after calling fellow comedian Peng Dang racist names in a mocking Chinese accent.
It was during a Big Laugh Comedy show in Austin, Texas, where Dang had just introduced Hinchcliffe to the stage after doing a series of jokes related to #StopAsianHate. During the set, Hinchcliffe reportedly further made racist jokes against Chinese people.
The incident led to the cancellation of several of Hinchcliffe’s upcoming shows and reportedly caused him to be removed from his agency, WME.
Other pre-program speakers at the Madison Square Garden rally also made false and harmful remarks about Harris. Businessman Grant Cardone told the crowd that Harris “and her pimp handlers will destroy our country;” Trump’s friend David Rem called her “the devil” and “the anti-Christ.”
Former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson also made racially charged jokes aimed at Harris; radio host Sid Rosenberg used expletives to describe undocumented immigrants and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani also repeated disparaging rhetoric on Palestinians.
Trump’s campaign has still only condemned one comment — those from Hinchcliffe — in a long list of sexist, racist and profane remarks that were made during his Madison Square Garden campaign rally.
In the final weeks of his campaign, Trump has regularly used vulgar, dark and shocking rhetoric to paint a picture of a country being “destroyed” – attacking migrants and his opponent’s intelligence.
