Here's a statement just issued by King County Elections:

Elections’ staff discovered yesterday that the drive up ballot drop box located at Elections headquarters in Tukwila had been vandalized sometime earlier that morning. As a result, the metal cover plate of the “snorkel,” which is that portion of the drop box at the top of the deposit shoot that is sealed at the conclusion of the election, had been pulled apart from the unit and removed from the site. The drop box still contained 860 ballots sealed in their return envelopes.

So the box "still contained 860 ballots" after the cover was "pulled apart." Yikes. That seems like a security breach. I've called King County Elections officials to ask if ballots may have been stolen, but haven't heard back. I wonder how many ballots were in the other, comparable drop boxes? More than 860? The rest of the announcement appears after the jump.

King County Elections filed a police report on the incident and segregated the ballots for review by the Canvass Board which is the governing body for issuing a determination on such matters.

The Canvass Board met today and reviewed the incident, and instructed that the ballots from the impacted drop box be kept separate for the present time and authorized that they proceed through the first stages of ballot processing that includes sorting by legislative district and signature verification. The Canvass Board will determine how to proceed from that point in a future meeting.

King County Elections Director Sherril Huff noted that, “An election is something that belongs to all of us and it’s very sad that anyone would choose to violate an official ballot receptacle, potentially disrupting a process that we all hold dear.”

This is the first incident that anyone at Elections could recall of a drop box being vandalized while an election was underway.