Unarmed National Guard members in plain clothes will be stationed near Clark County ballot drop boxes and voting centers for the Nov. 3 election, after the county accepted Gov. Bob Ferguson's offer of voluntary state assistance. The guard members will not touch ballots, interact with voters or act in any law enforcement capacity — their role is strictly to observe and report problems to local authorities.
According to KGW, Ferguson offered counties across the state voluntary National Guard support to help secure voting infrastructure, and Clark County was among those that said yes. FOX 13 Seattle reports that Clark, King, Pierce, Thurston and Snohomish counties all accepted the assistance, with Guard members set to be unarmed, dressed in civilian clothes and limited to an observer role. The station notes that the Guard will not empty drop boxes, handle ballots or interact with voters in any way.
A Decision Left to Each County
The offer was framed from the outset as optional, not mandatory. “Whether to accept this offer is your decision,” Ferguson said, according to KOMO News, which described the plan as an “Election Neighborhood Watch” that would place personnel out of uniform and without weapons. Per the same report, those Guard members would observe ballot drop locations and be ready to communicate with local authorities if something went wrong, without ever interacting with voters dropping off ballots.
Not every county signed on. Spokane County turned down the governor's offer altogether, according to The Spokesman-Review, which reported that the county auditor's office declined to station nonuniformed Guard members at drop boxes or other high-traffic voting areas. Thurston County took the opposite approach, accepting the state resources to support election security during the general election, the same KOMO report notes — with officials there stressing that personnel would not serve as law enforcement or touch, handle or process ballots in any capacity.
Why Officials Are Adding Security Now
The state has not disclosed how many Guard members will actually be deployed, FOX 13 Seattle reported. Ferguson's office has pointed to recent threats as part of the justification, including letters containing white powder that were mailed to multiple government sites, according to the same station.
Those concerns sit on top of a more concrete incident from 2024, when someone planted a device that set fire to a ballot box in Vancouver, destroying hundreds of ballots, FOX 13 Seattle reported. The Center for an Informed Public likewise ties the state's offer in part to ballot drop boxes in Clark County and in Portland, Oregon, being set on fire ahead of the 2024 election. In the aftermath of that arson, county auditors statewide said they would increase how often they picked up ballots from drop boxes ahead of Election Day, per the Washington State Standard, which also reported that ballot pickups are normally handled by teams of two election workers following a security checklist.
A Long History of Guard Involvement in Elections
This is not the Washington National Guard's first brush with election duty. The Guard has provided cybersecurity support for every state election since 2016, according to the KOMO News report — meaning this year's ballot-box observation role builds on a much longer-running, if less visible, partnership between the state's military reserve force and its election system.
State law also sets some ground rules for the spaces Guard members will be watching. Under RCW 29A.40.170, all ballot drop boxes must be secured at 8 p.m. on the day of a primary, special election or general election. Separately, RCW 29A.84.510 restricts electioneering within 25 feet of a drop box during the voting period, barring attempts to persuade a voter toward a candidate or ballot measure in that zone.
