More Bomb Threats Cause California, Maryland Elections Office Evacuations
Update #3 | Why send threats after the election, outside of swing states?
If you haven’t read the initial post,
I highly recommend reading that first ↓
Update #3
New bomb threats targeting non-swing states, days after the election, raise questions.
Now entering the weekend after Election Day, new bomb threats have targeted both Maryland and California ballot processing centers and election offices.
On Friday, the registrar of voters’ office Riverside County, California, was targeted by an emailed bomb threat that resulted in a five-minute evacuation.
Los Angeles County received similar threats Saturday afternoon targeting the Norwalk headquarters of the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk and a Ballot Processing Center. These were evacuated, after which operations resumed at the Ballot Processing Center. Though the Norwalk building was cleared, employees were sent home for the day. As of Saturday, more than half a million ballots remain to be processed in L.A. County.
The area had received a bomb threat on Election Day as well, targeting the Orange County Registrar of Voters. The evacuation lasted about 15 minutes on Tuesday.
Just like the other bomb threats received across the country, no bombs have been found. It’s unclear if the threats to the California sites originated from Russia like the others.
Threats also targeted several Maryland boards of elections, including Baltimore County’s, on Friday. Some of the buildings were evacuated and workers were sent home for the day.
What’s notable about these bomb threats is that they’re occurring outside swing states and after Election Day. Earlier reporting had limited the threats to the five battleground states of Georgia, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.
Context:
In the last update, I wrote that election security expert Steven Spoonamore believes these hoax bomb threats are not used to allow hackers to access voting machines.
Instead, he thinks their purpose is to force evacuations so that election workers leave ballots unattended. In this way, evacuations break the “chain of custody” on the ballots, which can provide legal justification for judges to deny a recount.
Assuming that’s correct, why would they call them in to ballot counting centers outside of the swing states? There’s a few possibilities:
The hacks were more widespread than we initially assumed, impacting voting machines/ballot scanners all over the country and not just in the swing states.
This is plausible, because 48 out of the 50 states swung hard red this election and “software errors” have been reported in other non-swing states.
Possible Reason #1: Trump is vain and wants to win the popular vote, too.
Possible Reason #2: Pushing the whole country more red creates the illusion of Trump having a popular mandate to enact the more extreme portions of his agenda.
Bomb threats outside the swing states are intended only to disrupt ballot counting and sow chaos in the election rather than specifically relating to the vote fraud scheme.
This is plausible, because it furthers the objectives of Russia’s hybrid war with the West.
Bomb threats sent to counties that weren’t hacked draw attention away from the pattern of odd voting equipment glitches and suspicious vote tallies occurring in counties that received the threats.
This is plausible, because it masks the connection between the threats and the hack.
Possible Reason #1: This makes it harder to tell where the hacks took place.
Possible Reason #2: It creates plausible deniability.
Possible Reason #3: They’re intended to distract/throw us off the scent, because they know we’re onto them. I think this makes the most sense due to timing, as the latest bomb threats have only been called on Friday and Saturday after #TrumpCheated and #Recount2024 have trended on Twitter.
Non-swing state bomb threats are being sent by copycats, not the same people who sent the ones related to the election.
This is the least plausible option, but is worth considering.
Additional new details:
We previously heard that threats were sent from .ru (Russian domain) emails, but details have also emerged that some emails were sent written using Cyrillic letters (used by the Russian alphabet).
"So you know it came from Russia, so that helped us save some time on that one," said Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said at a press briefing.
Whoever is making the threats is either Russian and wants us to know that, or not Russian and wants us to think he is.
International context:
On November 3, the nation of Moldova held its national elections, which were marred by Russian interference—including false bomb threats in European cities, which were intended to stop the voting process for Moldovans abroad.
Stanislav Secrieru, National Security Advisor to the Moldovan President, wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter: "We’re seeing massive interference by Russia in our electoral process as Moldovans vote in the presidential runoff today—an effort with high potential to distort the outcome.”
Moldovan police say they have “reasonable evidence” that Russia also tried to steal that election through vote-buying, cyberattacks on voting infrastructure, voter intimidation, and organized transportation of voters to polling stations from within the country and from overseas (which is illegal under the country’s electoral code).
Other than transporting voters to the polls, all the same tactics have been used in the U.S. election.
In Moldova, the female, European Union-aligned candidate won the election over her Russian-backed opponent, despite Russia’s schemes. We didn’t prevail to the same extent here in America.
More to come…
Donald Trump didn’t just steal the election, he stole America’s future. And it will stay that way unless we do something about it.
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With democracy at stake, isn’t this election worth double-checking?
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