The 2024 Presidential Election has sparked debate across the United States. Multiple states across America have received bomb threats regarding election polls. With law enforcement taking these threats seriously, some have evacuated their residential area.
Any type of threat is going to be taken seriously by law enforcement to prevent harm. Election bomb threats have been known to try to disrupt the voting system and scare registered voters.
All politicians hope for smooth voting. When voting gets disrupted, this can cause panic. Every vote gets counted individually.
As the New York Times states, “The F.B.I. said it had learned of bomb threats in several states, “many of which appear to originate from Russian email domains,” but that it had found no evidence of genuine menace.” The FBI suggests that many of these threats have been coming from Russia to distract voters. Some also claim that this distraction was a tactic to help the Democrat candidates win the election.
Some believe that President Vladimir Putin of Russia could be involved. Conspiracists believe that Putin ultimately wanted Vice President Kamala Harris to win the presidential election in order to keep the war funding alive.
Unfortunately, in some cases, some ballot drop-off boxes were set on fire to disrupt election processing. This caused voters to panic. These fires cause conspiracy regarding advantages for more votes.
Some voters are unaware that if they find themselves in this situation their vote will not be recorded. This means that voters will get another chance to vote since their previous vote wasn’t counted.
Voters are able to tell if their vote was counted by checking the status of their absentee ballots. Peter Charalambous, an ABC News reporter, “While incidents of bad actors targeting ballot drop boxes are rare, experts told ABC News that the infrastructure surrounding absentee voting over the last decade has allowed election officials to be prepared for such incidents, through the use of 24-hour surveillance, fire suppression systems, and advanced ballot tracking software,” Charalambous states. This process helps ensure voters that their votes will be counted.
Others shift their focus onto bomb threats extending polling hours in multiple states. According to the Office of Public Affairs, “Nicholas Wimbish, 25, of Milledgeville, Georgia, was serving as a poll worker at the Jones County Elections Office on Oct. 16 when he allegedly had a verbal altercation with a voter.” Wimbish later intentionally mailed threats to the Jones County Elections Superintendent.
Over two dozen polling sites in Georgia received bomb threats. Georgia’s Secretary Of State, Brad Raffensperger addressed the threats on Nov. 5, 2024. He discussed how Georgia would be counting its votes slower in hopes of preventing inaccuracy.
Over time, Georgia has become a swing state. Swing states go back and forth between electing Democrat and Republican leaders. Georgia is a battleground state that totals 16 electoral votes.
Along with both California and Texas having a large amount of electoral votes, swing states are important and can be unpredictable. In 2020, Georgia was a Democratic state, however, after the 2024 election, Georgia turned into a Republican state.
Some voters question the legitimacy of the votes counted in Georgia. With Trump ahead by around 130,000 votes, the Associated Press declared Trump as the winner of Georgia. This ultimately helped him pull away to win the election.
