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Tuesday November 05, 2024

Georgia poll worker threatened to bomb election workers, say US prosecutors

By Reuters
November 06, 2024
People vote at a polling station as Georgians turned out a day after the battleground state opened early voting, in Atlanta, Georgia, US on October 16, 2024.— Reuters
People vote at a polling station as Georgians turned out a day after the battleground state opened early voting, in Atlanta, Georgia, US on October 16, 2024.— Reuters

WASHINGTON: A Georgia poll worker was arrested on Tuesday on US charges that he sent a letter threatening to bomb election workers that he wrote to appear as if it came from a voter in the presidential election battleground state.

Federal prosecutors said Nicholas Wimbish, 25, had been serving as a poll worker at the Jones County Elections Office in Gray, Georgia, on Oct 16 when he got into a verbal altercation with a voter.

The next day, Wimbish mailed a letter to the county’s elections superintendent that was drafted to appear as if it came from that same voter, prosecutors said. The letter complained that Wimbish was a “closeted liberal election fraudster” who had been distracting voters in line to cast ballots, according to charging papers.

Authorities said the letter, signed by a “Jones county voter,” said Wimbish and others “should look over their shoulder” and warned that people would “learn a violent lesson about stealing our elections!”

Prosecutors said the letter ended with a handwritten note: “PS boom toy in early vote place, cigar burning, be safe.” Wimbish was charged with mailing a bomb threat, conveying false information about a bomb threat, mailing a threatening letter, and making false statements to the FBI, prosecutors said. A lawyer for Wimbish could not be immediately identified.