At least two polling stations within the U.S. state of Georgia had been briefly shut down after hoax bomb alerts blamed on Russia had been made Tuesday.
The threats, which had been deemed to be non-credible, brought about two polling areas in Fulton County, Georgia, to be evacuated. Both re-opened after about half-hour, officers mentioned, and the county is searching for a courtroom order to increase the situation’s voting hours previous the statewide 7 p.m. deadline.
Republican Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger mentioned Russian interference was behind the Election Day bomb hoaxes.
“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 instructed reporters.
The Russian embassy in Washington didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
In an announcement, the FBI mentioned it was conscious of non-credible bomb threats to polling areas in a number of states, with a lot of them originating from Russian e-mail domains.
Georgia alone obtained greater than two dozen phony bomb threats on Election Day, most of which occurred in Fulton County, an FBI official mentioned.
A senior official in Raffensperger’s workplace, talking on the situation of anonymity to talk freely, mentioned the Georgia bomb hoaxes had been despatched from e-mail addresses that had been utilized by Russians attempting to intrude in earlier U.S. elections.
The threats had been despatched to U.S. media and the 2 polling areas, the official mentioned. “It’s a likelihood it’s Russia,” the official mentioned.
Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican former President Donald Trump are locked in a good race to win the White House. Opinion polls recommend the competition is simply too near name.
The phony bomb threats mark the most recent in a string of examples of alleged interference by the Russians within the 2024 election.
On Nov. 1, U.S. intelligence officers warned that Russian actors manufactured a video that falsely depicted Haitians illegally casting ballots in Georgia. Intelligence officers additionally discovered that the Russians created a separate phony video that falsely accused somebody related to the Harris presidential ticket of taking a bribe from an entertainer.
U.S. intelligence officers have additionally accused Russia of interfering in earlier U.S. presidential elections, particularly the 2016 race which Trump gained in opposition to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
Source: www.dailysabah.com