Election officials brace for new threat: Fake 911 calls

SCOTTSDALE, Arizona — Election officials across the U.S. are bracing for a new threat this November: a barrage of bogus bomb threats and sham active shooter alerts meant to sow fear among election workers.

The deliberate preparations for fake 911 calls targeting election officials this November represent a shift from four years ago, when the issue — known as swatting — did not pose a top concern for state or federal governments, or cybercrime experts.

But political agitators and attention-seeking criminals have bombarded police across the country with sham tips over the last two years, tricking them into showing up at a victim’s door or a crowded public event, guns drawn and fingers tensed. Now, cybercrime experts and those in election battlegrounds are worried that this year’s election could attract a flurry of new swatting calls at a moment when the country is already on edge for politically charged violence.

A massive police response to a bogus threat could strike fear in voters as they head to the polls, disrupt a vote count that is already awash in conspiracies, or — in a nightmare scenario — trigger an accidental shooting of a public official.

“Swatting is absolutely something that we think about,” said Amanda Gonzalez, the clerk in Jefferson County, Colorado, one of Colorado's largest jurisdictions. “I'm just having a lot of conversations about, ‘Hey, this is something that could happen, and what is our plan, and what does this look like if it happens in our house?’”

Election administrators are trying to blunt any swatting calls that crop up during the election by taking steps like sharing their home address and that of key election sites with law enforcement.

Police “know where elections officials live. They know where our activities are going to be taking place, and they will be exercising great caution and care when responding to emergency calls at those specific locations,” said Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat.

Those fake police calls are “a technique that domestic terrorists have used in the past, and it is not going to work as effectively anymore,” added Fontes.

With the world watching the election, battleground states could become high-profile targets

One reason experts are worried: The U.S. election is so high-profile, and so concentrated in just a handful of battlegrounds, that officials and voting sites could become appealing targets even for those who are just trying to sow chaos for fun.

Cybersecurity professionals who study swatting say most attacks emanate from an online community of young, English-speaking agitators who have perpetrated some of the most disruptive cyber attacks of the last two years. That includes paralyzing slot machines at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas last year and mounting a sprawling data extortion campaign against the likes of AT&T and Ticketmaster this spring.

The group, known to researchers as The Comm, is not political. But its members have earned a reputation for undertaking reckless acts of digital malfeasance for no reason other than notoriety — meaning they could come after election officials who will be thrust into the national limelight this November.

It will be “like moths to a flame” this election, said Chris Krebs, the former head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, during a press roundtable at a security conference last month.

While officials and cybercrime experts are largely worried about domestic agitators, it’s possible that foreign states could try their hand at swatting, too — or enlist others to do it for them.

Earlier this year, police arrested a California teenager who made hundreds of false bomb threats and active shooter warnings — sometimes by request and for a fee — at politicians' homes, schools, courthouses and religious institutions. And this August, U.S. law enforcement unsealed charges against two Eastern European nationals who single-handedly staged 100 swatting attacks this winter. Their victims included a former U.S. president, a slew of federal judges and the current head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, among others.

“I have nice residents, but the problem is that a swatting attack could come from anywhere,” said Thad Hall, the director of elections in Mercer County, Pennsylvania.

Election officials also worry about the bitter partisanship enveloping the country.

Gonzalez, the local clerk from Colorado, believes she is vulnerable because she is the first Latina and queer woman to hold her position. And Sara Tindall Ghazal, the lone Democrat on Georgia’s State Election Board, said online threats and harassment against her ramp up whenever the board reviews politically charged cases.

“It’s pretty clear when we’re hearing cases what’s going to attract the most attention,” said Tindall Ghazal. And prominent election officials have already been swatted this cycle. After Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows found late last year that former President Donald Trump was ineligible to run for office because he engaged in an insurrection — a decision that was ultimately overturned — her house was swatted, although she was not home.

How officials are preparing for possible swatting attacks around the election

The recent surge in swatting incidents does have one upside: Together with law enforcement professionals and the federal government, election officials say they’ve developed protocols to help mitigate a possible deluge of incidents during and after the election.

Gonzalez and Tindall Ghazal told POLITICO they have both shared their home addresses with local police to head off swatting calls. And top election officials in Georgia and Arizona are also sharing the locations of key election facilities with law enforcement.

“We’ve game planned this stuff,” said Gabriel Sterling, the chief operating officer to the Georgia secretary of state. Sterling’s personal residence was targeted in a swatting attack near last Christmas, shortly after a bomb threat was called in at the Georgia State Capitol.

Across the country, officials are also drawing up plans should fake 911 calls get through.

Fontes and Sterling said their offices have organized tabletop exercises with state and federal officials, like the Department of Homeland Security, to prepare local officials for swatting attacks and other new threats.

In Mercer County, Hall said he has made sure the county is ready for his biggest worry: a fake threat getting called into a polling place on Election Day.

“We have plans for how to move the polling place or evacuate it,” he said, while acknowledging it would make administering the vote “more complicated.”

Some election officials are also upping their physical security.

Just down the road from Fontes’ office, the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center now has a steel rail fence ringing its perimeter — built after 2020, when it became one of the epicenters of Trump’s lies about a stolen election.

According to Bill Gates, a Republican on the county Board of Supervisors, the office will be turned into a “fortress” come Election Day, with added security such as additional barriers and a metal detector.

“It doesn't look great, and it makes me sad,” said Gates, who faced harassment and other threats — including swatting — after he certified the 2020 election in defiance of his own party.

“But also it helps, I think, because it makes us feel safe.”