Russia is behind a series of false bomb threats in Georgia and other states that briefly closed polling stations on Tuesday, federal and local officials said.
“The FBI is aware of bomb threats to polling locations in several states, many of which appear to originate from Russian email domains,” the agency told the Washington Post. “None of the threats have been determined to be credible thus far.”
There were at least five threats in Georgia alone, all in Democratic-leaning areas, including two in polling places in Fulton County that were down for half an hour and another in nearby Gwinnett County that was down for 30 to 40 minutes, a state official unauthorized to speak publicly said on condition of anonymity. Another threat was aimed at a polling place in Clayton County, which like the other two is in the greater Atlanta area.
Some polling location officials said they were seeking court orders to extend their hours of operation to make up for the disruption.
The top elections official at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said the disruptions were not deemed a national threat to the orderly voting process.
The threats followed the issuance of a fake FBI message, also attributed to Russia, warning voters to cast ballots “remotely” to avoid potential terrorist attacks.
The pattern, which marks an escalation from recent videos falsely claiming voting fraud, bears out U.S. warnings that Russia especially would seek to sow distrust and chaos during the election and its aftermath and could try to instigate violence.
With most voters having decided whom to support, officials said it made sense for Russia, whose disinformation efforts have centred on supporting former president Donald Trump, to shift toward provoking chaos around the voting process instead of trying to change opinions.
“This certainly feels like a new page in the Russian playbook, given that they were accused of doing the same thing in Moldova over the weekend,” said Bret Schafer, senior fellow at the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a project of the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
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In the past few days, Germany accused Russia of calling in bomb threats to disrupt voting in Moldova’s closely watched election. A German Foreign Ministry spokesman said multiple polling places set up for Moldovans living abroad had been disrupted.
U.S. cybersecurity agency senior adviser Cait Conley said the government was not aware of a co-ordinated propaganda campaign to build on the bomb threats by claiming that it was an opportunity for vote-switching, but added her agency “would not be surprised” by efforts to take advantage.
“We have seen the influx of narratives that have the potential and arguably the intention of inciting physical violence,” Conley said in a press briefing.
Conservative pundits on social media disputed the attribution to Russia and blamed Democrats.
“If you believe Russia did a bomb threat in Georgia — you probably believed it when the government told you masks work,” one wrote.
— Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff, Holly Bailey and Aaron Schaffer contributed to this report.