SEATTLE (AP) — Authorities investigated Monday after early morning fires broke out at ballot boxes in Portland, Oregon, and nearby Vancouver, Washington, where hundreds of ballots were destroyed.

The Portland Police Bureau reported that officers and firefighters responded to a fire at an urn around 3:30 a.m. and determined that an incendiary device had been placed inside. Multnomah County Elections Director Tim Scott said a fire extinguisher inside the drop box protected almost all the ballots; only three were damaged and his office planned to contact those voters to help them obtain replacement ballots.

Hours later, across the Columbia River in Vancouver, television crews filmed images of smoke billowing from a ballot box at a transit center. Vancouver is the largest city in Washington’s 3rd Congressional District, the site of what is expected to be one of the tightest U.S. House races in the country, between Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, the first-elect, and Republican challenger Joe Kent.

Clark County Auditor Greg Kimsey in Vancouver told The Associated Press that the Fisher’s Landing Transportation Center drop box was also equipped with a fire suppression system, but that for one for whatever reason, it was not effective. Responders pulled out a stack of burning ballots from inside the box and Kimsey said hundreds were lost.

“Heartbreaking,” Kimsey said. “This is a direct attack on democracy.”

Surveillance cameras covered the drop box and surrounding area, he said.

The final ballot pickup at the transit center drop box was at 11 a.m. Saturday, Kimsey said. Anyone who subsequently cast their ballot there was invited to contact the auditor’s office to obtain a new one.

The office will increase the frequency of ballot collection, Kimsey said, and change collection times to evenings, to prevent drop boxes from remaining full of ballots overnight, when similar crimes are considered more likely to occur.

An incendiary device was also found on or near a ballot box in downtown Vancouver early on October 8. He did not damage the ballot box or destroy any ballots, police said. The FBI and other agencies had investigated.

Both Washington and Oregon are vote-by-mail states. Registered voters receive their ballots in the mail a few weeks before the election, then return them by mail or by dropping them in ballot boxes.

In Phoenix last week, officials said about five ballots were destroyed and others damaged when a fire broke out at a drop box at a U.S. Postal Service station.

Christina A. Cassidy in Atlanta contributed.

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