Bomb threats targeting election offices in Minnesota among more than 100 similar threats nationwide, secretary of state says
MINNEAPOLIS — E-mailed bomb threats targeting election offices in Minnesota were among more than 100 threats across multiple states, Secretary of State Steve Simon said Thursday. About half — 47 of 87 — of the state's counties received the menacing messages over the weekend.
"The Department of Homeland Security said that this was not credible," Simon said in an interview with WCCO. "And in fact, where it's been investigated in Minnesota, there was no bomb. No one's been hurt at all, but this is a serious thing when human beings are targeted with threats of violence, particularly when they're responsible for carrying out an election."
The state's elections chief said some counties evacuated their buildings and called in the bomb squad upon receiving the threats, which were two to three-sentence emails addressed to no one in particular, but warned that a bomb had been planted on the property and provided the specific addresses of the county buildings.
The places targeted were geographically and politically diverse.
"There's no particular rhyme or reason as to why these particular counties, but I hope at least that the federal investigation will ultimately show us who's responsible for this," Simon said.
Michael Stalberger, elections administrator for Blue Earth County, said he and a colleague came into the office — which is at the historic courthouse in Mankato — on Saturday to do some post-election work. An email from Friday night sent to the generic elections email address had initially been filtered out into a spam folder. When he found it, he called the sheriff's office.
"It was not specific in terms of the location of the building or anything like that, but it did have our address in there, which meant that we were going to take it a little bit more seriously," he recalled.
On Tuesday, the Chisago County Government Center — which houses the county elections office — was evacuated because of an emailed bomb threat officials received over the weekend, though it's unclear if this incident is connected.
Simon said local election officials and the state "very much did contemplate" bomb threats like this and emphasized there were no reports of threats or intimidation on Election Day. In battleground states like Georgia, there were bomb threats at polling places last week, though they turned out to be hoaxes, too.
"That was really our first experience with it, and we hope it was also our last," Stalberger said, who underscored that the election otherwise ran smoothly.
"We're never going to let somebody make a threat to the elections office and win, right? We're always going to be resilient and come back from that," he said.
Simon's office in September received a suspicious package with a return address that read, "United States Traitor Elimination Army," and was evacuated. Investigators ruled the substance was nonhazardous.
