VANCOUVER, Washington. — About 475 damaged ballots were recovered from a box that was set on fire early Monday in Southwest Washington, a county official said Tuesday.

Clark County Auditor Greg Kimsey said workers will begin searching for voter information in damaged ballots on Wednesday in order to contact them for a new ballot. He said officials believed that even if they were damaged, workers would be able to extract voter information from the ballots.

The damaged ballots are separate from an unknown number that were destroyed, Kimsey said.

Incendiary devices damaged and destroyed hundreds of ballots in a drop box in Vancouver, Washington, and damaged three ballots in a drop box in Portland, Oregon, in what federal, state and local officials called an attack on democracy before a heated election day.

Authorities said enough material from the incendiary devices was recovered to link Monday’s two fires, as well as an incident on Oct. 8, when an incendiary device was placed in another ballot box in Vancouver . No ballots were damaged in this incident.

Surveillance footage captured a Volvo approaching the drop box in Portland just before nearby security personnel discovered a fire inside the box, a Portland Police Bureau spokesperson said. Portland, Mike Benner. The incendiary devices were attached to the outside of the crates.

The FBI is one of the investigating agencies. U.S. Attorney Tessa M. Gorman and Greg Austin, acting special agent in charge of the FBI’s Seattle field office, said in a joint statement Tuesday that they wanted to assure residents that they were working together to investigate the fires and that they would endeavor to detain the person. or “fully responsible” responsible persons.

No arrests had been announced Tuesday evening.

The drop box fire in Portland was quickly extinguished thanks to a suppression system inside the box and a nearby security guard, police said.

Hours later, another fire was discovered at a drop box at a transit center across the Columbia River in Vancouver. Vancouver is the largest city in Washington’s 3rd Congressional District, the site of what should be one of the closest American House races in the country, between Democratic Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and her Republican challenger Joe Kent.

The Vancouver ballot box was also equipped with a fire suppression system, but it failed to prevent hundreds of ballots from burning, according to Kimsey. He urged voters who placed their ballots in the transit center box after 11 a.m. Saturday to contact his office for a replacement ballot.

The office is increasing the frequency of ballot collection and changing collection times to evenings, Kimsey said, to prevent drop boxes from remaining full of ballots overnight, when similar crimes are considered more likely to happen.

Officials in at least two other Washington counties, including King, where Seattle is located, announced Tuesday that ballot boxes would be checked more often until Election Day.