On Wednesday, San Francisco Sheriff Paul Miyamoto got a report from one of his deputies about a crowd near a ballot drop box in front of City Hall.
Two days earlier, hundreds of ballots had been torched by devices placed outside ballot drop boxes in Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington. Miyamoto headed to the scene to check it out for himself. Far from an intimidating mob, he found a get-out-the-vote rally.
“We are very aware of what’s going on nationally,” Miyamoto told Gazetteer SF. “We're aware of what happened up north, and we're a little concerned. But we haven't had any of those incidents here in San Francisco. We're very vigilant when it comes to that.”
The city government is carefully monitoring election security this year, especially as conspiracy theories have swirled about voter fraud nationwide. Drop boxes, in particular, have been targeted for years by right-wing conspiracy theorists, who have portrayed them as hives of voter fraud.
A September memo from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security — first published by Property of the People — said domestic violent extremists see drop boxes as “soft targets.” They have used social media to promote their destruction using road flares, cement or expanding foam, farm machinery, and timed explosives. Some have also deployed decoy drop boxes to fool some voters into throwing their votes away.
“Threats are concerning,” said John Arntz, director of the San Francisco Department of Elections, adding in the next breath that he’s received them previously but “never taken them seriously.”
Arntz said he’s reassured by the 150 sheriff’s deputies assigned to monitor the city’s 37 ballot drop boxes and 501 polling places. The officers collect ballots from the drop boxes once a day, a routine that will increase to twice daily as the volume increases, and then three times on Election Day. On those final collections, the deputies haul and escort 80-pound bags of ballots to a warehouse at Pier 31, and then to City Hall, where they are tabulated, Miyamoto said.
(Miyamoto is up for reelection this year. To maintain a distance from the process, a deputy chief is in charge of elections security. “I get a pass on the job part, but not the stress of…waiting for results,” Miyamoto said.)
Once dropped off, ballots can be tracked using an online tool from the California Secretary of State, which allows voters to see when the Department of Elections receives, opens, removes, and scans their ballots.
Miyamoto described the long list of local, state, and federal agencies his office has been meeting with, sometimes daily, ahead of Election Day. The sheriff said he’s also preparing for the certification of local elections on Dec. 5, and consulting with the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation about the Jan. 6 certification of the Electoral College count, which has been designated a National Security Special Event. “All hands are on deck” that day, Miyamoto said.
“We just want to make sure that we are coordinating our efforts and make sure that we keep the city safe and that nothing flares up,” he said. “Or if anything does come up, it’s handled appropriately.’’
