ATLANTA — While workers were counting ballots for primary elections in August, the elections office near Seattle received a suspicious envelope that turned out to contain trace amounts of fentanyl.
It happened again this week, and not just in Washington, where the office was processing ballots from the general election and had to be evacuated. Election offices in at least five states were sent threatening mail, some containing the potentially deadly drug, authorities say.
Authorities were working to intercept any additional letters still in the mail system, including one bound for Atlanta’s Fulton County, the largest voting jurisdiction in one of the nation’s most important presidential swing states. Officials said Friday afternoon the letter sent to the Georgia office had been located.
The letters were just the latest worrisome disruption for election workers in Seattle and across the country who have been besieged by threats, harassment and intimidation since the 2020 presidential election.
“There’s certainly a toll that occurs emotionally and mentally with our elections administrators, and it’s devastating,” said Julie Wise, the King County elections director. “But we’re not going to be paused or impacted by these individuals who clearly want to break us.”
Election offices have been understaffed for years, and the pandemic-related challenges before the 2020 vote and the hostility afterward driven by false claims of a stolen election have led to a wave of retirements and resignations. Those who remain are tired and worried – and yet determined to do everything they can to conduct a safe and secure election next year.
King County was one of at least four counties in Washington with election offices that were evacuated this week after they received envelopes containing suspicious powders — including two that field-tested positive for fentanyl — while workers were processing ballots from Tuesday’s election.
Authorities say suspicious letters also were sent to election offices in four other states: Georgia, Nevada, California and Oregon – with some being intercepted before they were delivered. Four of the letters sent to offices in the five states contained fentanyl, according to a memo Thursday to election officials from the FBI and U.S. Postal Inspection Service.
Election officials are confronting the new reality of having the overdose-reversal drug naloxone on hand as a precaution. Fulton County has been the target of conspiracy theories since the 2020 election, and its election workers have been harassed and threatened over false claims that they were stuffing ballots to aid Democrats.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, the state’s top election official and a Republican, said his office had alerted all 159 of its counties of the possible threat. In speaking about the seriousness of the threat, he noted one of his sons died of a fentanyl overdose about five years ago.
“We want to make sure our workers in the Fulton County election office are safe,” Raffensperger said. “We know how deadly this stuff is.”
Fentanyl, an opioid that can be 50 times as powerful as the same amount of heroin, is driving an overdose crisis as it is pressed into pills or mixed into other drugs — though briefly touching it cannot cause an overdose and researchers have found that the risk of fatal overdose from accidental exposure is low.
