More than 20 election offices have been targeted with suspicious packages this week
CNN
Suspicious packages were sent this week to election offices in more than 20 states, leading to an FBI investigation, triggering evacuations and rattling staff, according to a CNN survey of state offices and Associated Press reporting.
Suspicious packages were sent this week to election offices in more than 20 states, leading to an FBI investigation, triggering evacuations and rattling staff, according to a CNN survey of state offices and Associated Press reporting. The threatening envelopes arrived as election officials across the country prepare for Saturday’s deadline to send the first ballots to overseas and military voters and as states are weeks away from the widespread start of in-person early voting and mail-in balloting. According to CNN and AP reporting, suspicious envelopes were received by election officials, or intercepted on the way to officials in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Virginia and Wyoming. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Thursday that his office has been notified by the US Postal Service that a suspicious package was “headed our way,” and that the mail service will try to intercept it, as it previously did last November when an envelope of fentanyl was sent to an election office in Fulton County. “We’re on the lookout for it, and so are they,” Raffensperger said of the package. Karen Brinson Bell, the executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections, told CNN that that the battleground state was also targeted this week.
Vice President Kamala Harris directed her team this week to immediately schedule a visit to Georgia following a media report that revealed two deaths linked to the battleground state’s abortion restrictions, according to two sources familiar with the planning – a callback to the rapid response travel she’s done over the past year.
Attempts by conservatives to purge state voter rolls ahead of the November election, including from Donald Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee, are ramping up, prompting concern from the Justice Department that those efforts might violate federal rules governing how states can manage their lists of registered voters.