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Early voting in the U.S. midterm elections is underway. Voters are deciding which party will control Congress, as well as numerous state legislatures and governors’ offices. Snopes’ fact-checkers are flagging rumors surrounding the election, debunking false statements by candidates and suspicious voter fraud claims with nonpartisan research and expert sources. Join our effort to keep this election fact-focused by becoming a Snopes member.

In 2024, hundreds of midterm election ballots burned overnight in ballot boxes overnight in Oregon and Washington. According to the FBI, someone placed improvised incendiary devices two ballot drop boxes in Vancouver, Washington, between 3:30 and 4 a.m. Oct. 8 and one drop box in Portland, Oregon, between 2 and 4 a.m. Oct. 28. 

The incidents appeared to materialize fears about a form of election tampering that had played on the public consciousness prior to 2024 and even inspired an episode of the TV drama “Succession” in 2023.

During summer 2026, a county clerk’s office in Los Angeles also reported that a small number of mail-in ballots had been fire-damaged inside a ballot drop box days before the state’s June primary elections. 

Though actual, verified instances of ballot burning are rare, voter fears about legitimate votes going uncounted this way will undoubtedly resurface during the 2026 midterm elections. Incidents like the ones in Oregon, Washington and California raise legitimate questions about what happens when criminals attempt to tamper with democratic elections and how both voters and officials can ensure that every vote is counted.

Real instances of ballot burnings can also stoke existing fears of election tampering and encourage the spread of misinformation. For example, in 2020 and 2021, Snopes debunked rumors about ballot-burning in Virginia and Arizona. These incidents were not ballot box fires and turned out to be either refuted or unproven, but spoke to real voter concerns. In our research, Snopes has not encountered a reported and verified incident of ballot burning that was not a ballot box fire, suggesting that ballot drop box fires are the most likely way a ballot can burn.

Drop boxes most-common source of ballot fires

The legitimate incidents of ballot burning that Snopes encountered from previous election cycles all happened in ballot drop boxes. A ballot drop box is a container where voters can drop mail-in or absentee ballots after filling them out. 

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 29 states and Washington, D.C., explicitly allow the use of ballot drop boxes in elections and 11 states explicitly prohibit them. Six states do not have statues explicitly about drop boxes, but some jurisdictions use them. Four states do not have legislation governing ballot drop boxes and do not use them.

While the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency provides guidelines for the use of ballot drop boxes, individual states determine how, when and where to use them. The NCSL wrote that “drop boxes may be supervised or unsupervised with security features, such as cameras, locks and fire suppression systems.”

CISA issued special guidelines about ballot drop boxes and incendiary devices after the incidents in Oregon and Washington in 2024. The agency suggested that states consider emptying the boxes more often and installing video surveillance and fire suppression systems.

How officials mitigate drop box fires

Out of the three ballot drop boxes burned in Washington and Oregon in 2024, the one in Portland reportedly already had a fire suppression system installed, meaning only three ballots were damaged. 

Elections officials reportedly contacted the voters whose ballots burned to issue replacements.

However, the fires in Vancouver, Washington, destroyed “hundreds” of ballots. At the time, Clark County Auditor Greg Kimsey issued a statement to voters asking them to check whether their ballot had been received if they deposited it at a certain drop box in a certain time frame. 

At the time of the fire in the early hours of Oct. 28, it had been more than a day since elections authorities had last emptied one drop box that burned. Because ballots dropped in drop boxes have usually not been processed by elections officials, there is no sure way to know to whom damaged ballots belong (unless identifying details are still legible).

Kimsey told Snopes via email in October 2026 that approximately 500 ballots burned in the 2024 fires in Washington. Of those, Kimsey said, all but 19 voters got replacement ballots and submitted their votes

Kimsey said the elections board duplicated the 19 missing ballots but “due to the damage we were unable to determine the voters’ choices for all offices and issues on the ballots.”

Ultimately, though the ballot drop box fires in Clark County in 2024 were destructive, officials were able to ensure that the vast majority of the affected votes were counted.

In October 2026, CNN reported that Clark County had upgraded its ballot drop boxes following the 2024 attacks. The new boxes, CNN reported, “include technology that sends a text message to officials if the temperature inside the box rises above a certain temperature, if the box receives a forceful blow or if it’s removed from its geo-fenced location.” Kimsey confirmed this information to Snopes.

Aside from better fire suppression technology, CNN reported that elections officials in Pennsylvania, Illinois and California had invested in ballot drop boxes that photographed people dropping off ballots and scanned the ballot return envelope, meaning officials would know which ballots were in a given box at a given time.

Along with fire suppressant technology, the data the updated ballot drop boxes collected would make it possible for officials to contact affected voters directly in the event of a ballot box fire.

In sum, while ballot drop box fires do pose a threat to voters, elections officials have multiple ways to prevent or mitigate their effects. Our analysis suggests that readers should treat reports of ballot burning that is not a ballot drop box fire with suspicion. We will attempt to investigate such rumors as they surface during the 2026 election cycle.

For further reading about common election-related claims, Snopes has previously reported on whether poll workers can mark your ballot or how vote spikes affect elections.

Sources

Claim:

U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., altered her birth year in official records from 1981 to 1982.

Rating:

Context

According to The Washington Post, Omar said that requests to change her birth year were due to it being incorrect, not to cover up the truth. We found evidence to support that she was 17 in the year 2000.

As U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., entered the final weeks of her reelection bid in October, federal agents searched her home in a criminal investigation reportedly related to claims that she or her father may have lied on immigration paperwork when she sought to secure legal status in the U.S. decades earlier.

In an Oct. 12 statement on X, Omar said called the search “an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement.” It is unusual for a federal agency to publicly investigate someone running for office so close to Election Day.

Following the search, numerous social media posts claimed Omar was not a minor in 2000 — the year she reportedly became a U.S. citizen after her father naturalized — saying that official records indicated her birth year was originally listed as 1981 before it was later changed to 1982. Some of the posts said this indicated citizenship fraud.

We looked into the evidence and found that while her birth year was changed in official records, according to The Washington Post, she said this was to fix incorrect information rather than cover up the truth. We found other pieces of evidence indicating she could’ve indeed been a minor in 2000, including her high school yearbook and reports by reputable news outlets in 2018.

Omar has long maintained that she was 17 when she became a citizen in 2000 — receiving citizenship by default, according to U.S. law, after her father was naturalized. 

In 2018, two years after she first ran for public office, articles by The Associated Press and The New York Times reported she had become a U.S. citizen in 2000, when she was 17.

In addition to the 2018 news reports, we found a high school yearbook showing Omar was a junior in 2000 and that she was in the graduating class of 2001. While not definitive proof, it supports the claim that Omar was not yet an adult when her family applied for citizenship.

Omar attended Edison High School in Minneapolis. As a member of the class of 2001, she was listed under the “Juniors” section in the 2000 yearbook.

(Classmates.com / Snopes illustration)

Her family fled Somalia in the early 1990s during the country’s civil war, eventually arriving in the U.S. in 1995 before applying for citizenship five years later. 

Archived versions of her profile in official records, such as the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library, show that at one time, Omar’s birth year was listed as 1981 — which would have made it unlikely for her to be a minor in 2000.

The circulated posts above took screenshots of an archived version of that website along with the current version (archived), noting that her birth year was changed from 1981 to 1982.

A note on the current version of her profile read:

Her birth year is correct. It is incorrectly reported as 1981 in other sources. As of May 24, 2019, Rep. Omar’s congressional staff are working with Wikipedia and the U.S. House to correct her birth year in those sources.

In a emailed statement to Snopes, David Schmidtke, deputy director of the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library, confirmed that “congressional staff contacted the library regarding her birthdate.” 

“However, we do not have supporting documentation, as the information was ‘self-reported,’” he wrote. “The library does not independently verify birthdates before publishing or updating them.”

We contacted Omar’s office seeking comment on the speculation surrounding her birth year and have not yet received a response. We will update this story if we do.

Sources

Claim:

An image authentically shows attendees at one of U.S. President Donald Trump’s rallies punching the face of a protester wearing a shirt that says “RELEASE THE EPSTEIN FILES.”

Rating:

In October 2026, social media users spread an image that claimed to show a woman being punched in the face at one of U.S. President Donald Trump’s rallies. 

The person in the picture was wearing a shirt that said “RELEASE THE EPSTEIN FILES.” (The Justice Department has released millions of files related to its investigation of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, but critics allege the agency made redactions to obscure information.) 

The image circulated on platforms such as X and Facebook. Many users sharing the image appeared to believe it was authentic. 

“If there’s one photo to sum up the Trump era, this is it,” one X post aid. 

While a protester wearing a similar shirt was, in fact, attacked at an Oct. 12 Trump rally in Youngstown, Ohio, the image above was created using generative artificial intelligence, according to OpenAI’s detection software. As such, we have rated this image as fake. 

OpenAI’s verification tool detected an invisible watermark on the image called SynthID, which the company’s AI tools, like ChatGPT, embed in generated images. (As such, the service can only detect images generated with OpenAI’s software and does not detect AI generation via other large-language models, such as Google’s Gemini.) 

(OpenAI)

SynthID detectors are largely accurate but can still be fallible. However, a review of credible footage taken from the Trump rally indicated that the actual protester was wearing slightly different clothing, including an open flannel layered on top of the T-shirt. The T-shirt the real person wore also had variations in the lettering style and coloring, unlike the more uniform version in the AI-generated image. 

A reverse-image search could not determine the original creator behind the AI-generated picture. 

Numerous reputable news organizations, including NBC News and an ABC affiliate, have published legitimate footage of the event. 

NBC News’ video shows rally attendees chanting, “USA, USA, USA” as a man in a gray shirt and a baseball cap appears to push down the protester. Another man in a dark blue or black shirt appears to tackle the protester, hit her and put her in a headlock. Security officials then escort the protester away. 

Another clip posted by WKBN, a Youngstown television news station, shows that the same man pulled on the protester’s hair: 

Images of the incident are also available via credible photo repositories, including Getty Images and Reuters. 

NBC News reported that there were no arrests “because deputies didn’t see the beating and the woman elected not to file a report, Sheriff Jerry Greene said.”

Trump, meanwhile, mocked the protester’s weight while watching the attack unfold. “You know they’re paid protesters,” Trump said, without evidence. “That’s a very low-class protester.”

The protester has not publicly shared their identity with the media as of this writing.