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, Utah, 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.
Bell said staff are now wearing gloves while processing the mail and isolating parts of the office when they find a suspicious item that might be contaminated. An official from the Kentucky Secretary of State’s office also told CNN that, after this week’s incident, they directed staff to wear gloves while handling mail, “out of an abundance of caution.”
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