Bomb threats despatched to polling locations and ballot-counting places in no less than 5 battleground states throughout the U.S. Tuesday focused largely Democratic counties, an NBC News evaluation has discovered.
The full extent of who obtained the bomb threats shouldn’t be clear. None are believed to have been deemed credible. NBC News compiled a listing of 67 places in 19 counties, based mostly on native information studies and state and native election officers’ statements, all of which seem to have obtained related threats. Of the 67 places, 56 have been in 11 counties that voted for Joe Biden within the 2020 election, together with the eight most populated. Those high-population Democratic counties embody voting places for Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Detroit, Michigan; Phoenix, Arizona; Atlanta, Georgia; and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Maricopa County, Arizona, which Biden received by a slim margin, has constantly been the topic of election denialism conspiracy theories. The different 5 — Michigan’s Wayne County, Pennsylvania’s Philadelphia County and Georgia’s Dekalb, Fulton and Gwinnett counties — have been a number of the largest Democratic strongholds of their respective states.
Much remains to be unknown concerning the threats, together with the id of who despatched them. They do seem to have been designed to affect both the notion of the election consequence or the end result itself, as all of the threats identified to NBC News have been despatched to the handful of battleground states extensively believed by each events to be essential for profitable the election. It’s additionally unclear if the threats tended to deal with city counties as a result of they’re higher identified or include extra individuals, or as a result of they are usually Democratic strongholds.
“This is a rare and really disturbing improvement,” mentioned Larry Norden, the vice chairman of the elections and authorities program at NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice. “Whether it’s a overseas or home actor that was concerned, there must be repercussions for it.”
“In some sense, we have been fortunate that there was numerous preparation for this situation going into 2024. I don’t know that anyone anticipated the coordinated marketing campaign that looks like that we had, however there have been numerous conferences of legislation enforcement and election officers, tabletop workouts and trainings to be ready for this, and in consequence, I feel the disruption was largely minimized,” Norden mentioned.
Some places that briefly shut down on Tuesday, like Dekalb and Philadelphia County, prolonged their voting hours that night. None of the threats resulted in a voting location closing for the day and there’s no indication that the evacuations had a significant influence on voter turnout.
Some of the threats additionally included counties that voted closely for Donald Trump in 2020, together with the comparatively smaller Blair and Clearfield Counties in Pennsylvania.
The FBI mentioned in an emailed assertion Tuesday that “many” of the threats “seem to originate from Russian e-mail domains.” Some extra threats appeared to have been despatched from a French service, a U.S. official briefed on the matter instructed NBC News. Anyone with unrestricted web entry can join e-mail providers in different nations, making it troublesome to infer who truly despatched the threats.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has overtly blamed Russia for the threats since late Tuesday morning, although it’s not clear if he’s referencing those coming by a Russian e-mail service or has entry to extra intelligence. The FBI declined to supply additional remark. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which within the lead-up to the election made formal attributions of on-line propaganda campaigns to nations like Iran and Russia, declined to remark.
A spokesperson for Russia’s embassy in Washington, D.C., denied the nation was accountable.
“We have seen the allegations by US officers you check with, however no proof of Russian involvement was offered both to the general public, or to the Embassy,” the spokesperson mentioned. “The US Authorities didn’t even trouble to contact us on this matter.”
Michael Kosnar and Chloe Atkins contributed.