This Puyallup metal company is playing a crucial role in Tuesday’s presidential election
The presidential election has been giving Larry Olson sleepless nights. But it’s not the outcome he’s worried about.
Olson is vice president for Puyallup-based metal fabricator Laserfab. The company makes tank-like ballot drop boxes. They’ve been in overdrive the past few months as counties across the country geared up for early and at-home voting.
“You don’t want anything to go wrong,” Olson said the week before the election. “You’re talking about mechanical, inanimate objects. They function or they don’t.”
The boxes give voters the option of dropping off their ballots in a secure location without relying on the U.S. postal service. Voters also need to trust the safety of those boxes, which can sit in unsupervised locations.
As of late October, Laserfab has built more than 700 boxes for 64 U.S. counties. Their first client in 2009: The Pierce County Auditor’s Office.
“Well over 200 have come since June,” Olson said. Those orders and what’s at stake has added to Olson’s stress.
“With one little hiccup, you know, if county X doesn’t get their 10 boxes, there’s going be some major issues happening with the whole voting process in that county,” Olson said. “Hundreds of thousands of people in each county are counting on you to get them boxes that they will be able to vote in.”
The boxes are a small portion of the company’s workload.
Their biggest client is a distributor of scissor lifts. But the boxes are having an increasingly important role in the democratic process this year as the coronavirus pandemic has driven county election officials to increase opportunities for voters to fill their ballots out at home.
“Our folks are very proud,” Olson said. “Most of them that live around here vote in the boxes that they’ve actually made.”
Smash-proof and fire-proof
The boxes represent years of requests from election officials to make a product that can safely collect and hold ballots.
“Every design aspect, every question that was asked by the counties — it came back to the integrity of the voting process,” Olson said. “It’s really amazing the passion these people have for the integrity of the process.”
Slots are narrow to keep foreign objects out. And they angle upwards.
“If we angle the slot a little bit, it’s harder for somebody to come by and dump in a liter of Pepsi or it’s harder for rain to get in,” he said.
Hinges are hidden inside. Doors cannot be closed without locking them first. The inside is painted a dark color to contrast with white envelopes.
The boxes are made from up to 1/4-inch thick steel. They are not indestructible but close to it. An errant SUV knocked one over in Lacey this summer.
“The paint was scratched but they just tipped it back up,” Olson said.
A bus sideswiped a King County box. It needed a new collection slot but was otherwise unscathed, Olson said.
The company has three designs which correspond to small, medium and large. County governments order the sizes based on population and how often they want to collect ballots, Olson said. The largest boxes can hold thousands of ballots.
The drop boxes cost between $3,000 and $6,000. Installation and a concrete pad increases the cost.
Pierce County beginnings
The company had never touched a ballot box, let alone designed one, when Pierce County deputy auditor Cindy Hartman came knocking in 2009. Washington was about to completely switch to vote by mail, and Pierce County needed more and secure ballot drop boxes.
Today, Pierce County has 46 drop boxes. The vast majority are within two miles of all Pierce County residences.
How have they performed?
“We had graffiti on two boxes,” Hartman said. Another got knocked over in a traffic accident.
“It took the whole concrete pad with it but didn’t hurt it, didn’t open the box or anything,” Hartman said.
Some counties, such as Pierce, install fire suppression equipment in the boxes. The system can detect and extinguish a fire inside the box. They were thoroughly tested at a Pierce County fire station.
“Some of the edges of the ballot envelope got singed,” Hartman said.
The boxes are popular with voters and one of Hartman’s top career achievements.
“When I leave here, that’s still my legacy,” she said.
As of Oct. 28, 73% of all returned ballots in Pierce County came in via drop box. The rest were returned by mail.
Laserfab markets the boxes under a Vote Armor brand and has clients in 13 states.
“It’s amazing the word of mouth that happens between county elections people,” Olson said.
Interest in the boxes picks up every two years, Olson said.
”We’re very confident that we’ve made boxes that will stand the test of time,” he said.
This story was originally published October 30, 2020 at 5:05 AM.
