SPOKANE, Wash. — The Spokane County Elections Office went back to work Thursday after the office was evacuated Wednesday.
"We're back to work as normal. We started at 8 o'clock. We're processing ballots," Spokane County Auditor Vicky Dalton said.
An envelope on the elections processing table was opened by an employee who found white powder inside. Spokane Police later confirmed the powder tested positive for fentanyl.
"Immediately, everything in that area stops," Dalton said.
After first responders gave an all-clear, Dalton said people were allowed back in the building.
She said the few that returned processed signature verification to keep some of the work moving.
"Staff were able to do the signature verification process to at least keep those envelopes flowing," Dalton said. "We didn't do any tabulation yesterday at all."
Dalton explained ballot tabulation happens during the afternoon shift. This means no votes were counted prior to the fentanyl discovery Wednesday morning.
She said there were other morning processes happening just before operations came to a hard stop.
"Mail is coming in, they would have been sorting the envelopes with the big sorter, the mechanical sorter, taking images of the signatures, they would have been verifying signatures, they would have been opening the envelopes where the signatures had been approved, opening the envelopes to extract the ballots out of signatures," Dalton said. "We have several distinct steps in several distinct areas where processes occur and they were probably all going on at the same time."
With a 34% voter turnout before polls closed Tuesday, there are still potentially hundreds of thousands of votes left to be counted.
"We will continue to do our job. We'll continue to change our processes to protect our employees and our ballots," Dalton said.
Although ballot processing resumed Thursday, Dalton wants other offices to stay alert. She said it was possible more powder would be mailed in.
"In all likelihood, there will be more and again, it's just really disturbing that an individual out there would want to disturb our democracy and elections," she said.
In addition to Spokane County, three other Washington state elections offices were mailed envelopes with the white powder Wednesday.
"Sending powder whether it was harmful or not is very cowardly," Dalton said. "It is disheartening and disrespectful to people who are truly working to keep democracy safe and functioning."
Dalton said if people have problems with government officials, they should engage in productive conversation. She said this isn't the right way to go about voicing concerns.
Spokane Police said they're working alongside state and federal investigators, including the FBI and U.S. Postal Inspection Service. The Associate Press reported powder was mailed to election offices in Washington, California, Nevada and Oregon.
The employee who opened the envelope was back at work Thursday with no symptoms.
As more results come in, the elections office said nothing is official until the Secretary of State affirms results on Nov. 28.
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