‘We identified the source, and it was from Russia,’ said Brad Raffensperger, the state’s top election official.
A bomb threat that was made targeting a polling location in Georgia was traced back to Russia and wasn’t credible, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said on Tuesday.
“We’ve heard some threats that were of Russian origin,” Raffensperger said at a news conference on Election Day. “In the interest of public safety, we always check that out, and we’ll just continue to be very responsible when we hear about stuff like that.”
Without elaborating on how officials determined where the bomb threat originated, Raffensperger said they “identified the source, and it was from Russia.”
The threats caused the closure of polling places in Union City, located near Atlanta, officials in Fulton County said in a statement on Tuesday. However, the county stressed that the polling sites at the Etris Community Center and Gullatt Elementary in Union City were closed only for a short period of time.
Police in the county said that they received “multiple calls regarding threats” at polling locations, adding that after an investigation, “no active threats” were discovered.
“They’re up to mischief, it seems,” Raffensperger told a news conference, referring to the Russians. “They don’t want us to have a smooth, fair, and accurate election.”
Georgia is one of seven battleground states during the 2024 election, which will help determine the contest between presidential candidates Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.
Last week, Raffensperger’s office said in a statement that a video that was circulating online that purported to show a Haitian illegal immigrant with several Georgia IDs voting “is false.”
“This is false and is an example of targeted disinformation we’ve seen in this and other elections. It is likely foreign interference attempting to sow discord and chaos on the eve of the 2024 Presidential election,” the statement said, claiming the video was likely from “Russian troll farms.”
Russians were also blamed for a cybersecurity incident against the Georgia secretary of state’s website on Oct. 14, officials said at the time.
Outside of Georgia, Michigan’s top election official, Jocelyn Benson, warned voters on Tuesday of “foreign bad actors” who may attempt to distract from the U.S. elections process. But she noted that her office hasn’t seen any evidence of interference. Like Georgia, Michigan is considered a key swing state.
“We know that they will use all sorts of misinformation and other tactics today and in the days ahead to create chaos, confusion, fear, division and sow seeds of doubt about what is a very clear, transparent, and secure election process,” she told a news conference, without elaborating.
Benson further said her office has “yet to see anything actually materialize, anything that’s been alleged online as an irregularity to actually be true.”
Meanwhile, the U.S. intelligence community has observed “foreign adversaries, particularly Russia, conducting additional influence operations intended to undermine public confidence in the integrity of U.S. elections and stoke divisions among Americans,” according to a joint statemen from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the FBI, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Monday.
In particular, the agencies said, Russian “influence actors” have produced fake videos and articles relating to the 2024 election to “suggest Americans are using violence against each other due to political preferences.”