Quick Take
A bomb threat forced the Santa Cruz County Elections Department to evacuate for the better part of Saturday. The Santa Cruz Sheriff’s Office searched the premises and did not find any potential threats. County Clerk Tricia Webber still thinks that her office will be able to add about 15,000 ballots to the county’s tally Monday afternoon despite the interruption.
The Santa Cruz County Elections Department received a bomb threat via email that forced an evacuation for the better part of the day on Saturday and a temporary halt to the counting of outstanding 2024 election ballots, said County Clerk Tricia Webber.
Webber said she heard that several other county offices around the state, including Orange, Placer, San Diego and Riverside, also evacuated due to bomb threats they received over email.
A number of hoax bomb threats interrupted elections department activities around the country last week, including in Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Pennsylvania. Many of those appeared to originate from Russian email domains.
“I’m more mad than anything, because I had known that it had happened in other places, and I figured it was bogus,” said Webber, adding that her office still must follow all safety protocols regardless of any threat’s dubious nature. “But the email did what the goal was, which was to disrupt the process.”
Webber said workers began their weekend ballot counting around 9 a.m. Saturday, but got to only about 10:45 before needing to evacuate for the better part of the day. The sheriff’s office came to the scene and searched the area, finding nothing.
Webber said she also reported the incident to the Department of Homeland Security, the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the California Secretary of State’s Office and the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services.
Despite the significant disruption Saturday, Webber said workers got in a full day of work Sunday and would do so on Monday as well. She still believes that at least 15,000 ballots will be added to the county’s tally by around 4:30 p.m. Monday.
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