Suspected Arsonist Targets Ballot Box; Many Votes Inside Erased
Democrats and their allies in the establishment media have been pushing hard for mail-in balloting for the 2020 presidential election.
Despite the high potential for fraud, the ineptitude of the U.S. Postal Service and the difficulty some voters have with properly filling out and sending back their ballots, many states have done away with restrictions on who can cast absentee ballots, and several states are mailing ballots to every registered voter.
Amid the whole convoluted setup comes an incident out of Baldwin Park, California, where firefighters say someone intentionally chucked a burning newspaper into a ballot drop box, potentially destroying dozens of ballots inside, KABC-TV reported.
KCBS-TV said authorities including the FBI are investigating the matter as a suspected arson, and no perpetrators had been identified.
According to both Los Angeles news outlets, at about 8 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 18, officials said someone set on fire the ballots that were placed inside a designated metal box in front of the Baldwin Park public library.
Witnesses told KABC the drop box was like a chimney with smoke pouring out of it as the blaze burned inside. Firefighters were forced to pour water on the fire, leaving citizens’ ballots damaged by water and fire.
“People are frustrated across the country; it’s no different in Baldwin Park,” the city’s mayor, Manuel Lozano, told KABC. “The incident that happened … does send a very bad message, as it is, the frustration with the voting box, and then this occurs.”
Arson investigators have not revealed how many ballots were destroyed. Initial estimates pegged the number of ballots involved in the incident at 60 to 100, but the figure now is over 200, officials said, according to KCBS. The Los Angeles Times reported at least 20 residents had “reached out to arrange for a replacement ballot.”
Authorities are investigating a fire which damaged an official ballot drop box Sunday night in Baldwin Park, damaging countless ballots in the process. Firefighters had to use a chainsaw to cut the box open and remove stacks of burned ballots. https://t.co/8NxjAeVVnW pic.twitter.com/DsUCNmLQVH
— CBS Los Angeles (@CBSLA) October 19, 2020
George Silva, a resident of Baldwin Park, shared footage of firefighters cutting into the box to extinguish the blaze with water from a fire hose.
“Everything’s destroyed?” Silva asked a firefighter.
“We’re going to save as many ballots as we can,” an unidentified firefighter assured him as another first responder placed stacks of wet ballots on the sidewalk.
WARNING: The following video contains vulgar language that some viewers will find offensive.
Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solis told KCBS the incident “has all the signs of an attempt to disenfranchise voters and call into question the security of our elections.”
“It’s unbelievable to me that during this very important election cycle that someone would stoop that low to target an official drop box where people have been placing their ballots and set it to fire,” L.A. County Supervisor Janice Hahn said, although she assured the news outlet that the compromised ballots have been accounted for and those voters already contacted to fill out new ones.
“It’s my understanding that it was malicious; it wasn’t just a kid maybe throwing a match in a box,” Hahn said.
“It was some serious vandalism cutting the box; they were determined to really destroy ballots.”
The left has been hammering the idea that mail-in balloting is necessary and safe during COVID-19, but this situation shows just a tiny fraction of the potential hazards it presents across the nation.
This box was in a public place, but it doesn’t appear there were any security measures in place, including a surveillance camera that would have captured footage of an arsonist.
If a bit of burning newspaper could potentially destroy 200 votes, what could a coordinated effort from either campaign do with money and resources?
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For all of the obvious problems vote-by-mail and other balloting methods present, the left should be advocating for in-person voting if they care about the validity of election results — unless the ensuing chaos is part of their plan.
Voting in person on Election Day on Nov. 3 is the best way to ensure votes are properly cast and counted. If Democrats really care about voter disenfranchisement, they should be pushing for in-person balloting.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
