By Steve Neavling
Polling locations in three critical battleground states — Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin — were targeted with hoax bomb threats on Election Day, many reportedly originating from Russian email domains, the FBI confirmed on Tuesday.
The threats disrupted some voting sites, though the FBI emphasized that “none of the threats have been determined to be credible thus far,” Reuter reports.
In Georgia, two polling sites in Fulton County were briefly evacuated but reopened after about 30 minutes, officials reported.
Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger pointed to Russian interference as a likely source of the threats.
“They’re up to mischief, it seems. They don’t want us to have a smooth, fair and accurate election, and if they can get us to fight among ourselves, they can count that as a victory,” Raffensperger told reporters.
Meanwhile, the Russian embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Reuters was also unable to verify the extent of bomb threats in Michigan and Wisconsin. However, Ann Jacobs, head of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, confirmed two bomb threats targeting polling locations in Madison, which she said did not disrupt voting. She did not confirm any Russian involvement.
An FBI official noted that Georgia received more than two dozen threats, primarily in Fulton County, a Democratic stronghold. A senior Raffensperger office official, speaking anonymously, said the emails were from addresses previously used by Russian actors in other U.S. elections, adding, “It’s a likelihood it’s Russia.”
