The break-ins of six U.S. Postal Service drop boxes have raised new concerns about ballot theft as the country rolls into the 2020 election and people are encouraged to cast mail-in ballots because of the coronavirus crisis.
The Postal Service said the boxes in the central Virginia area around Richmond appear to have been opened by crowbars, though it is unclear what was stolen.
“We received calls from several post offices that our blue boxes, located at the post offices, had been tampered with,” United States Postal Inspector Michael Romano said. According to reports from the Washington Examiner and WTVR, a CBS affiliate, he added, “It appears that we’ve had some level of mail stolen from these blue collection boxes.”
President Trump and his surrogates have been warning against mail-in voting and suggested it could be targeted by thieves and fraudsters.
In a reaction to the Virginia theft, FreedomWorks President Adam Brandon raised new concerns.
He said, “It’d be a lie to say that our electoral system was ever 100% fraud-proof. Bad actors are always looking for a way to commit fraud. But it’s clear that the push for widespread voting by mail is opening the door to heightened threats to election integrity. This cycle, bad actors need only find the nearest mailbox.”
FreedomWorks and other groups have been advocating for greater election security.
“What happened in Virginia is a product of the push this cycle for widespread voting by mail. This year, with large swaths of the electorate encouraged to vote via mail, we are likely looking at just one of many possible ballot harvesting incidents to come. Incidents like these exact a toll on the public’s faith in the electoral process,” Brandon said.
