Voting hours extended at five polling places in Georgia’s Fulton County disrupted by bomb threats

Of the 177 polling places in Georgia’s Fulton County, 32 received bomb threats Tuesday, county Police Chief W. Wade Yates said. Some of the threats were called directly into the locations where voting was happening, while others were called into 911 or received by email, he said.
As a result, voting hours were extended at five polling places in Georgia’s Fulton County that were briefly closed because of bomb threats that were determined to be non-credible. Each voting location’s hours were extended for as long as they were closed. The extensions ranged from 10 minutes at one location to 45 minutes at two locations.
A metro Atlanta county also saw voting disrupted by bomb threats. About an hour before polls were to close, officials in DeKalb County said they received bomb threats against five polling places.
Officials in the overwhelmingly Democratic suburb said voting had been suspended at those locations until police confirm there are no bombs. County officials say they’re seeking a court order to extend voting, which is routine in Georgia when a polling place is disrupted.
“Rest assured that we are working quickly to ensure every voter will have an opportunity to cast their ballot despite these bomb threats,” DeKalb elections director Keisha Smith said in a statement.
Bomb threats to Georgia voting sites were made over the internet and included Cyrillic letters, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said. That gave election officials a clue about the origins of the threats, he said at an early evening briefing in Atlanta.
“We jumped on it quickly and then the FBI then followed our lead,” he said. He said that once the FBI released a statement about the matter earlier Tuesday, the threats “kind of tapered off.”
He said of the culprits: “I guess they realized that dog won’t hunt today in Georgia.”