Arizona law enforcement officials are conducting an arson investigation after election ballots were damaged when a USPS mail collection box was burned in Maricopa County, a Democratic stronghold.ABC 15 reported that crews responded to the USPS Osborn Station around 1:30 a.m. on Thursday and found a ...

Arizona law enforcement officials are conducting an arson investigation after election ballots were damaged when a USPS mail collection box was burned in Maricopa County, a Democratic stronghold.

ABC 15 reported that crews responded to the USPS Osborn Station around 1:30 a.m. on Thursday and found a mail collection box on fire.

“Approximately 20 electoral ballots were damaged, along with additional miscellaneous mail,” Phoenix Fire Department officials revealed, according to ABC 15.

  • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.worldEnglish
    623·
    1 month ago

    This particular situation looks more like someone just setting a mailbox on fire. It happened to have ballots because of election season but they weren’t the target.

      • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.worldEnglish
        610·
        1 month ago

        Not everything is about the elections just because it’s that season. Arson doesn’t care about the election.

        It wasn’t a ballot drop box that was set on fire, it was a regular old mail drop box.

        • YeetPics@mander.xyz
          6·
          1 month ago

          On the flip side, election season is the ONLY time an arsonist can burn people’s votes. Maybe that’s exactly why it happened after all 🤷

          • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.worldEnglish
            43·
            1 month ago

            Or, a guy with an criminal record already, with an existing warrant out, just committed another criminal offense unrelated to the explicit 4 weeks we happen to be in where there are ballots in the mix.

            Occam’s Razor. The simplest answer is usually the correct one.

            If he was targeting ballots, there’s a lot of better places to do it than one random mail dropbox. He wasn’t even found in the act, they found him after the fact from surveillance, he probably would have destroyed more boxes if he had a more complicated reason.

    • YeetPics@mander.xyz
      101·
      1 month ago

      How can you know the intent unless you set the fire?

      Oh, because it’s hearsay based on your feels. Okay, that checks outs.

      • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.worldEnglish
        81·
        1 month ago

        If anyone bothered to read more than this shitty reblog version of the story, the guy is clearly not driven by politics. He’s a run of the mill criminal that just wanted to be arrested so he did something he knew would do that. That is not exactly uncommon, jail will give you a place to sleep and guaranteed meals. For some people, that have little to nothing else in their life, that little bit of security is worth it. It had nothing to do with the ballots.

        But this is the internet, no one reads past a headline. And even fewer are going to look for a better source, even the one linked in this exact reblog crap post.

        From the actual ABC15 article:

        Phoenix police say surveillance video helped them quickly track down and arrest the suspect, a 35-year-old male, for an unrelated warrant. While in police custody, he allegedly admitted to starting the fire but claimed he “wanted to be arrested” and that his actions were not politically motivated and unrelated to the election.
        A USPS spokesperson and postal inspector told ABC15, “This does not happen often and is rare,” and urged people to place mail in collection boxes before the last collection time each day.

        His motivation for doing it makes no difference to the laws broken or sentencing. There’s no reason for him to claim it wasn’t political if it was.