At least two polling places in the US battleground state of Georgia were briefly evacuated on Tuesday after a fake bomb threat that state election officials blamed on Russian agents.
Threats deemed non-credible led to the evacuation of two polling places in Fulton County, Georgia. Officials said both reopened after about 30 minutes, and the county is seeking a court order to extend the location’s voting hours beyond the statewide 7 p.m. deadline.
Republican Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Russian interference was behind the election day bomb rumors.
Raffensperger told reporters, “It seems like they’re out to do mischief. They don’t want us to have smooth, fair and accurate elections, and if they can make us fight amongst ourselves, they can count that as a victory.” ” ,
The Russian Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In a statement, the FBI said it was aware of non-credible bomb threats at polling places in several states, many of which came from Russian email domains.
An FBI official said that Georgia alone received more than two dozen fake bomb threats on Election Day, the majority of which occurred in Fulton County.
A senior official in Raffensperger’s office, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the Georgia bomb rumors were sent from email addresses that the Russians had used in trying to interfere in previous US elections.
The official said the threats were sent to American media and two polling places. “There is a possibility that it is Russia,” the official said.
Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican former President Donald Trump are in a tough race to win the White House. Opinion polls show that the contest is evenly matched.
The fake bomb threats are the latest in a series of examples of alleged interference by the Russians in the 2024 election.
On November 1, US intelligence officials warned that Russian actors had created a video showing Haitians voting illegally in Georgia. Intelligence officials also found that the Russians had created a separate fake video in which someone associated with Harris’ presidential ticket was falsely accused of accepting bribes from an entertainer.
US intelligence officials have also accused Russia of interfering in previous US presidential elections, particularly the 2016 race which Trump won against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
