Business and Bollywood vote in India’s election/node/2513776/world
Business and Bollywood vote in India’s election
Mukesh Ambani, the Chairman of Reliance Industries, his wife Nita Ambani and their son Akash Ambani arrive to cast their votes at a polling station during the fifth phase of India’s general election, in Mumbai, India, May 20, 2024. (Reuters)
Big conglomerates have bestowed upon Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) a campaign war chest that dwarfs its rivals
Bollywood stars have backed its ideological commitment to more closely align with the country’s majority religion and politics
Updated 20 May 2024
AFP
MUMBAI: A parade of India’s business and entertainment elite — many of them supporters of Prime Minister Narendra Modi — went to the polls Monday as the financial capital Mumbai voted in the latest round of the country’s six-week election.
Modi, 73, is widely expected to win a third term when the election concludes early next month, thanks in large part to his aggressive championing of India’s majority Hindu faith.
“My vote is for the BJP and Modi,” said Deepak MaHajjan, 42, who works in banking. “There is no other choice if you care about the future of the economy and business. I have always voted this way.”
Big conglomerates have bestowed upon Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) a campaign war chest that dwarfs its rivals, while Bollywood stars have backed its ideological commitment to more closely align with the country’s majority religion and its politics.
Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan (R) with daughter Suhana Khan (L) arrives to cast his ballot to vote at a polling station in Mumbai on May 20, 2024, during the fifth phase of voting of India's general election. (AFP)
Latest data shows that the BJP was by far the single biggest beneficiary of electoral bonds, a contentious political donation tool since ruled illegal by India’s top court.
Leading companies and wealthy businesspeople gave the party $730 million, accounting for just under half of all donations made under the scheme in the past five years.
Conglomerate owners support Modi’s government because it caters to the needs of India’s “existing oligarchic business elite,” Deepanshu Mohan of OP Jindal Global University told AFP.
Lower corporate tax rates, less red tape and a reduction in “municipal regulatory corruption” have also helped Modi win the affection of corporate titans, he said.
N. Chandrasekaran, the chairman of Tata Sons, a sprawling Indian conglomerate with interests ranging from cars and software to salt and tea, cast his ballot at a polling station in an upper-class Mumbai neighborhood.
Natarajan Chandrasekaran (C) Chairman of the Board at Tata Sons with his wife Lalitha Chandrasekaran (L) shows his inked finger after casting his ballot to vote outside a polling booth in Mumbai on May 20, 2024, during the fifth phase of voting of India's general election. (AFP)
“It’s a great privilege to have the opportunity to vote,” he told reporters.
Asia’s richest man, Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani, also voted at the same polling station, accompanied by his wife, son, and a media scrum, posing to show his ink-stained finger.
Anand Mahindra, chairman of the eponymous automaker, told news agency PTI after voting: “If you look at the world around us, there is so much uncertainty, there is such instability, there’s terror, there’s war.
“And we are in the middle of a stable democracy where we get a chance to vote peacefully, to decide what kind of government we want. It’s a blessing.”
Modi’s cultivated image as a champion of the Hindu faith is the foundation of his enduring popularity, rather than an economy still characterised by widespread unemployment and income inequality.
A Sadhu or a Hindu holy man shows his ink-marked finger after voting, outside a polling station during the fifth phase of India's general election, in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, India, May 20, 2024. (Reuters)
This year he presided over the inauguration of a grand temple to the deity Ram, built on the grounds of a centuries-old mosque in Ayodhya razed by Hindu zealots in 1992.
Construction of the temple fulfilled a longstanding demand of Hindu activists and was widely celebrated across the country with back-to-back television coverage and street parties.
The ceremony was attended by hundreds of eminent Indians including Ambani, whose family donated $300,000 to the temple’s trust.
Also present were cricket star and Mumbai native Sachin Tendulkar along with actor Amitabh Bachchan — the single most famous product of Bollywood, as the financial hub’s film industry is known.
Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan casts his ballot to vote at a polling station in Mumbai on May 20, 2024, during the fifth phase of voting in India's general election. (AFP)
Numerous screen stars have established themselves as vocal champions of Modi’s administration since he was swept to office a decade ago.
Former soap actor Smriti Irani is one of the government’s most recognized ministers and beat India’s most prominent opposition leader Rahul Gandhi in the contest for her current parliamentary seat in 2019.
Filmmakers have also produced several provocative and ideologically charged films to match the ruling party’s sectarian messaging, which critics say deliberately maligns India’s 200-million-plus Muslim minority.
Last year’s “Kerala Story” was heavily promoted by the BJP but condemned elsewhere for falsely claiming thousands of Hindu women had been brainwashed by Muslims to join the Daesh group.
But some in Mumbai, like delivery driver Sunil Kirti voted for the opposition Congress party.
“In the past year I am earning less, but prices of basic essentials... food and vegetables have gone up,” said Kirti, 29. “Who is to blame for that?“
Bollywood actress Aishwarya Rai Bachchan (R) shows her inked finger after casting her ballot to vote at a polling station in Mumbai on May 20, 2024, during the fifth phase of voting in India's general election. (AFP)
India’s election is conducted in seven phases over six weeks to ease the immense logistical burden of staging the democratic exercise in the world’s most populous country, with more than 968 million eligible voters.
The fifth round is taking place as parts of India endure their second heatwave in three weeks.
Scientific research shows climate change is causing heatwaves to become longer, more frequent and more intense.
Turnout is down several percentage points from the last national poll in 2019, with analysts blaming widespread expectations of a Modi victory as well as the heat.
Temperatures reached 44 degrees Celsius (111 degrees Fahrenheit) in Jhansi in Uttar Pradesh, one of the states where tens of millions of people voted on Monday.
‘I feel it’: US voters confident in most pro-Trump town
As Americans voted on Tuesday, this time in the race between Trump and Kamala Harris, the support for the former president seeking an astonishing comeback from political isolation is alive and well
Updated 7 sec ago
AFP
MIAMI, United States: There are very few lawn signs backing Donald Trump in Miami, Texas. They aren’t necessary.
This speck of a town of around 500 souls — a world away from its glamorous namesake in Florida — is known as the most vehemently pro-Trump town in the United States: 96 percent of its voters backed the Republican in the 2020 election.
And it was about the same proportion in 2016 when Trump won the White House, defeating Hillary Clinton.
As Americans voted on Tuesday, this time in the race between Trump and Kamala Harris, the support for the former president seeking an astonishing comeback from political isolation is alive and well.
“Trump’s going to be the president,” said Julian Huff, 68, a former truck driver who was the fourth person in line to cast his ballot at the local community center.
“I feel it and feel good about it, and everybody I talk to feels the same thing,” said Huff, who in particular likes Trump’s campaign pledge to crack down on people trying to cross the US-Mexico border without documentation.
Miami — pronounced with an “uh” sound at the end — is the only town in Roberts County, in far northwest Texas. The closest city is Amarillo.
On Election Day, the streets of Miami are deathly quiet, interrupted only by the whistles of passing freight trains. The traffic lights are set at a constant blinking yellow.
Miami is surrounded by ranches and its inhabitants make their living from farming, small businesses, or working in oil refineries or gas plants.
Journalists, lured by Miami’s pro-Trump fervor, visited earlier this week but things were back to the normal silence on Tuesday.
Rick Tennant, a 71-year-old retired county judge who now runs an auto repair shop, said he always votes Republican — no matter who the candidate is.
“I’ll be happier if Trump wins. I think my money will be safer if Trump wins,” said Tennant, who voted early this year.
Randy Crismas, a 57-year-old gas station owner, said he likes Trump because of what he called the politician’s Christian values.
“This community is about as tight-knit a community as I’ve ever been in the good lord’s luxury of living in,” said Crismas.
“It’s a fabulous community and we take care of each other.”
Huff’s house is one of the few with a Trump sign outside. “He’s the man for the job and he’s going to get in,” said Huff.
Why the Middle East will weigh heavily on the new US president’s agenda
From Iran to Palestine, the incoming US administration will face a slew of daunting policy challenges
New leadership will have to balance diplomacy with action if it hopes to prevent further regional escalation
Updated 43 min 27 sec ago
Jonathan Gornall
LONDON: America has voted and now the Middle East waits to discover who has won — and, crucially, what that victory will mean for a region with which the US has had a complex relationship ever since President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Saudi Arabia’s King Abdulaziz bin Saud met for historic talks on a US warship in the Suez Canal in 1945.
Whichever way CNN and the other big US channels have called the result of the US presidential election, it could be days, or even weeks, before America’s arcane electoral process reaches its final conclusion and the winner is formally declared.
Although they have ticked the box on their ballot papers alongside their preferred candidate, America’s voters have not actually voted directly for Kamala Harris, Donald Trump or any of the four other runners.
Instead, in proportion to its number of representatives in Congress, each state appoints electors to the Electoral College, the combined membership of which votes for the president and the vice president.
It is rare, but not unknown, for electors to disregard the popular vote. But either way, to become president, a candidate needs the votes of at least 270 of the college’s 538 electors.
Their votes will be counted, and the winner announced, in a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6. The president-elect is then sworn into office on Monday, Jan. 20 — and, as first days at work go, these promise to be intense.
A poll worker waits for voters at a polling station in New York City on Election Day, November 5, 2024. (AFP)
There will be many issues, domestic and foreign, clamoring for the attention of the new president and their team.
But of all the in-trays jostling for attention, it is the one labeled “Middle East” that will weigh most heavily on the Resolute desk in the Oval Office and on the mind of the incoming president.
Depending on how they are handled, the sum of the challenges contained in that in-tray could add up either to an opportunity to achieve something no American president has achieved before, or an invitation to a disastrous, legacy-shredding encounter with some of the world’s most pressing and intractable problems.
Palestine and Israel
In November 2016, then-President-Elect Donald Trump declared: “I would love to be able to be the one that made peace with Israel and the Palestinians.” A lot of “really great people” had told him that “it’s impossible — you can’t do it.”
But he added: “I disagree … I have reason to believe I can do it.”
As recent history attests, he could not do it.
Every US president since Jimmy Carter, who led the Camp David talks that culminated in a peace agreement between Egypt and Israel in 1979, has been drawn inexorably into the maelstrom of Middle East politics — partly through economic and political necessity, but also because of the Nobel-winning allure of going down in history as the greatest peacemaker the world has ever known.
A woman rests with her children as displaced Palestinians flee Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip on November 5, 2024. (AFP)
Not for nothing, however, is the Israel-Palestine issue known in diplomatic circles as “the graveyard of US peacemaking.”
Since Oct. 7, 2023, and Israel’s onslaught on Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups in Gaza and Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon, a crisis long deemed intractable appears to have degenerated even further to a point of no return.
All the talk throughout the election by both of the main candidates, calculated to walk the electoral tightrope between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian voters, will now be forgotten.
All that matters now is action — careful, considered action, addressing issues including the desperate need for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and the reopening of the much-cratered pathway to a two-state solution.
Palestinians search through the rubble following Israeli strikes in Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, on November 1, 2024. (AFP)
Epitomizing the hypocrisy that has so infuriated millions, including the many Arab American voters who have switched their allegiance from the Democrats to the Republicans in this election, the Biden-Harris administration has bemoaned the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians while simultaneously supplying Israel with the munitions that killed them.
For Trump, regaining the White House would be a second chance at peacemaker immortality and, perhaps, the Nobel Peace Prize he felt he deserved for his 2020 Abraham Accords initiative.
Last time around, Trump did achieve the breakthrough of establishing diplomatic relations between Israel and the UAE and Bahrain. The big prize, which eluded him in 2020, was bringing Saudi Arabia on board. The Kingdom has made it clear that for that to happen, one condition must be fulfilled — the opening of a meaningful path to Palestinian statehood. This, therefore, could well be on the to-do list of a Trump administration in 2025.
For Harris, the presidency would be a chance to step out from under the shadow of the Biden administration, which has so spectacularly failed to restrain Israel, its client state, and in the process has only deepened the crisis in the Middle East and undermined trust in the US in the region.
The West Bank
If America has equivocated over events in Palestine and Lebanon, the Biden administration has not turned a blind eye to the provocative, destabilizing activities of extremist Jewish settler groups in the West Bank.
In February, the White House issued an executive order imposing sanctions on “persons undermining peace, security, and stability in the West Bank.” The order, signed by President Joe Biden, condemned the “high levels of extremist settler violence, forced displacement of people and villages, and property destruction,” which had “reached intolerable levels” and constituted “a serious threat to the peace, security, and stability of the West Bank and Gaza, Israel, and the broader Middle East region.”
A wounded Palestinian man arrives for treatment for injuries sustained in clashes with Israeli settlers in the village of Mughayir, at a hospital in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank on April 12, 2024. (AFP)
So far, the US, reluctant to act against members of an ally’s government, has stopped short of sanctioning Israel’s far-right ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, the chief settler rabble-rousers in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet.
Whether Harris would continue with, or even strengthen the sanctions policy, remains to be seen, but the settlers believe that Trump would let them off the hook. “If Trump takes the election, there will be no sanctions,” Israel Ganz, chairman of one of the main settler groups, told Reuters last week.
“If Trump loses the election, we will in the state of Israel … have a problem with sanctions that the government over here has to deal with.”
It was, after all, Trump who recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, undoing decades of US foreign policy, and moved the US Embassy there from Tel Aviv.
Whoever wins, if they are truly interested in peace in the region, they will need to exert pressure on Netanyahu to bring the extremist right-wingers in his government to heel. It was Ben Gvir’s repeated incursions into the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound that Hamas cited as the main provocation that triggered its Oct. 7 attack on Israel last year.
Iran
Iran has been a thorn in the side of every US administration since the 1979 revolution, the roots of which can be traced back ultimately to the CIA-engineered overthrow of democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953.
The next US president faces two key, interrelated choices, both of which have far-reaching consequences. The first is how to deal with Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian, a heart surgeon who was elected in July and, so far, has given every appearance of being someone who is prepared to negotiate and compromise with the West and its regional allies.
In the hope of lifting the sanctions that have so badly hurt his countrymen, if not their leaders, Pezeshkian has offered to open fresh negotiations with the US over Iran’s nuclear program.
According to a recent Arab News/YouGov poll ahead of the presidential election, this would be appealing to many Arab Americans.
Asked how the incoming US administration should tackle the influence of Iran and its affiliated militant groups in the region, 41 percent said it should resort to diplomacy and incentives, with only 32 percent supporting a more aggressive stance and a harsher sanctions regime.
Here, a Harris victory might pave the way to progress. The Biden presidency has seen some sanctions lifted and moves made toward reopening the Iran nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
In a move that infuriated supporters of Israel but brought some relief to a region that appeared to be teetering on the brink of all-out war, in October the Biden administration publicly warned Israel that it would not support a strike on Iranian nuclear facilities in retaliation for Tehran’s drone and missile attack on Israel.
Under a Trump administration, however, progress with Iran would seem unlikely. It was Trump who in 2020 ordered the assassination of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps commander, Qassem Soleimani, and who in 2018 unilaterally pulled the US out of the JCPOA to the dismay of the other signatories, Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. It is difficult to see how he could revisit that decision.
The Houthis
In many ways, coming to an understanding with Iran could be the greatest contribution any US president could make to peace in the region, especially if that led to a defanging of Iran’s proxies, which have caused so much disruption in the Middle East.
The previous Trump administration backed Saudi Arabia’s war against the Houthi rebels in Yemen and designated the group as a foreign terrorist organization. In 2021, however, Biden reversed that decision and withdrew US support for the military interventions of the Coalition to Restore Legitimacy in Yemen against the rebels, who overthrew Yemen’s internationally recognized government, sparking the civil war, in 2015.
Houthi supporters attend an anti-Israel rally in solidarity with Gaza and Lebanon in the Houthi-controlled capital Sanaa on November 1, 2024. (AFP)
Since then, however, Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea, and drone and missile assaults on Saudi Arabia, have opened Western eyes to the true nature of the rebel group, to the extent that in October Biden authorized the bombing of Houthi weapons stores by B2 stealth bombers.
For either candidate as president, apart from securing the all-important commercial navigation of the Red Sea, dealing with the Houthis offers the opportunity to mend bridges with Arab partners in the region (only Bahrain joined America’s Operation Prosperity Guardian, a naval mission to protect shipping).
But it is Trump, rather than the Biden-era tainted Harris, who is expected to come down hardest on the Houthis.
Hezbollah
Trump’s grasp of events in the Middle East has at times appeared tenuous. In a speech in October, for example, he boiled down the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon to “two kids fighting in the schoolyard.” As president, though, there seems little doubt that he would, once again, be Israel’s man in the White House.
In a recent call with Netanyahu, he appeared briefly to forget the importance of wooing the all-important Arab American swing-state votes and told the Israeli prime minister to “do what you have to do,” even as innocent civilians were dying at the hands of Israeli troops in Lebanon.
Of course, no American government is going to defend Hezbollah or any of Iran’s proxies. But when Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was targeted in an Israeli airstrike in September, Harris released a statement that outlined a preference for diplomacy over continuing conflict.
Demonstrators celebrate during a rally outside the British Embassy in Tehran on October 1, 2024, after Iran fired a barrage of missiles into Israel in response to the killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. (AFP)
She had, she said, “an unwavering commitment to the security of Israel” and would “always support Israel’s right to defend itself against Iran and Iran-backed terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis.”
But, she added, “I do not want to see conflict in the Middle East escalate into a broader regional war. We have been working on a diplomatic solution along the Israel-Lebanon border so that people can safely return home on both sides of that border. Diplomacy remains the best path forward to protect civilians and achieve lasting stability in the region.”
The US presence in the Middle East
One of the findings of the recent Arab News/YouGov poll of Arab Americans ahead of the election was that a sizable majority (52 percent) believed the US should either maintain its military presence in the Middle East (25 percent), or actually increase it (27 percent).
This will be one of the big issues facing the next president, whose administration’s ethos could be one of increasing isolationism or engagement.
America still has 2,500 troops in Iraq, for example, where talks are underway that could see all US and US-led coalition personnel withdrawn from the country by the end of 2026 — 23 years since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
A vehicle part of a US military convoy drives in Arbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, on September 17, 2024. (AFP)
In April, Biden and Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani issued a joint statement affirming the intention to withdraw US troops, who now act mainly as advisers, and transition to a “bilateral security partnership.”
Trump, on the other hand, could go much further, and as president has a record of disengaging America from military commitments. In 2019, to the alarm of regional allies, he unilaterally ordered the sudden withdrawal of the stabilizing US military presence in northeastern Syria, and in 2020 withdrew hundreds of US troops who were supporting local forces battling against Al-Shabaab and Daesh militants in Somalia.
In the wake of his election defeat that year, he ordered the rapid withdrawal of all US troops from Afghanistan. The order was not carried out, but in September 2021, the Biden administration followed suit, ending America’s 20-year war and leading to the collapse of the Afghan National Security Forces and the takeover of the country by the Taliban.
Harris or Trump? Millions vote in tense, tight US election
Tens of millions of voters were expected to cast their ballots Tuesday, on top of the 83 million who have already voted early, and both candidates put in a final word to try to sway the last undecided voters
Updated 49 min 17 sec ago
AFP
ATLANTA: The volatile, dramatic US presidential race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump headed to an unpredictable finish Tuesday, with millions of Americans casting their votes in one of the tightest elections of modern times.
The result — which may be known overnight or not for days — carries major consequences, either making Harris the first woman in arguably the world’s most powerful job or handing power back to Trump and his nationalist “America First” agenda.
As voters formed long lines across the country, several bomb threats were reported at polling stations, while police at the US Capitol — where Trump’s supporters rampaged following his 2020 defeat — arrested a man who smelled like fuel and was carrying a flare gun.
Both the FBI and Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger said the bomb threats, while not credible, appeared to originate from Russia.
Polls show one of the tightest races in modern times between Democratic Vice President Harris, 60, and Republican Trump, 78, who would be the first felon president, the oldest ever to take office and only the second to serve non-consecutive terms.
Harris made a late, dramatic entrance into the race when President Joe Biden dropped out in July, while Trump has ridden out two assassination attempts and a criminal conviction.
Tens of millions of voters were expected to cast their ballots Tuesday, on top of the 83 million who have already voted early, and both candidates put in a final word to try to sway the last undecided voters.
After criss-crossing the country, Harris returned to Washington where she called in to radio stations in swing states and took a few calls personally at a phone bank for voters.
“We’ve got to get it done. Today is voting day, and people need to get out and be active,” Harris told Atlanta station WVEE-FM.
She described her opponent as “full of vengeance. He’s full of grievance. It’s all about himself.”
Trump voted in Florida near his Mar-a-Lago residence, saying he felt “very confident” and that he wanted to be “very inclusive.”
But he aired concerns about the vote count — heightening fears he will reject the result and cite fraud if he loses.
“If it’s a fair election, I would be the first one to acknowledge it,” he said.
Trump has repeated baseless claims of election fraud while saying he should “never have left” the White House in 2021.
Casting a ballot in Arizona, Trump backer Camille Kroskey, 62, said she was voting in person due to concerns about voting fraud.
“I want to make sure I drop my ballot where it’s going to actually land somewhere,” she told AFP.
“Now, will it get counted?” she asked. “I don’t know.”
In perhaps the most crucial battleground state, Pennsylvania, Harris voter Marchelle Beason, 46, said the lines were “way, way, way more” than in the last election.
“We’re so divided right now, and she’s about peace. And everything that her opponent has to say is really negative,” she added.
At the same school, 56-year-old Darlene Taylor, wearing a homemade Trump shirt, said her main issue is to “close the border.”
Trump has vowed an unprecedented deportation campaign of millions of undocumented immigrants if elected.
The election is being watched closely around the world including in the war zones of Ukraine and the Middle East.
Harris has vowed to keep up support for Ukraine against Russia’s invasion and to put a greater effort in ending the Gaza war, although she has also voiced support for Israel.
Trump has promised a quick end to the Ukraine war, likely by pressing Kyiv into concessions, and has made clear he will give freer rein to Israel, which relies on US support.
“We can fix every single problem our country faces and lead America — indeed, the world — to new heights of glory,” Trump told his closing rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Harris hammered home her opposition to Trump-backed abortion bans in multiple states — a vote-winning position with crucial women voters.
Control of Congress is also at stake, with Republicans widely expected to win back control of the Senate.
US hails fired Israeli defense chief Gallant as ‘important partner’
Gallant has served as a main pointperson for the United States in the 13-month war in Gaza and now in Lebanon, with US officials seeing him as a professional without the ideological bent of some in Netanyahu’s cabinet
Updated 06 November 2024
AFP
WASHINGTON: The United States on Tuesday praised sacked Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant, a key intermediary with Washington fired by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“Minister Gallant has been an important partner on all matters related to the defense of Israel. As close partners, we will continue to work collaboratively with Israel’s next minister of defense,” a State Department spokesperson said.
Gallant has served as a main pointperson for the United States in the 13-month war in Gaza and now in Lebanon, with US officials seeing him as a professional without the ideological bent of some in Netanyahu’s cabinet.
Just Monday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke by telephone to Gallant to press US demands for greater humanitarian aid into Gaza, with a deadline looming next week in a threat to cut off some US military assistance without progress.
President Joe Biden’s own relationship has deteriorated with Netanyahu, who announced Gallant’s dismissal just as the United States was electing Biden’s successor.
FBI warns of hoax bomb threats from Russia at US voting sites
The FBI set up a national election command post in Washington to monitor threats 24 hours a day through election week, and security has been bolstered at many of the nearly 100,000 US polling stations
Updated 06 November 2024
AFP
ATLANTA: The FBI warned of bomb threats at polling stations in “multiple” US states on a tense Election Day, adding that none were credible but many appeared to originate from Russia.
The statement from the Federal Bureau of Investigation came as authorities in the US state of Georgia said hoax bomb threats had briefly disrupted voting there Tuesday.
The 2024 US presidential campaign has been a particularly volatile one, and security for Election Day has been ramped up to unprecedented levels given concerns over possible civil unrest, election chicanery and violence against poll workers.
“The FBI is aware of bomb threats to polling locations in several states, many of which appear to originate from Russian email domains,” spokeswoman Savannah Syms said in a statement.
“None of the threats have been determined to be credible thus far,” she added, urging the public to “remain vigilant.”
Georgia’s secretary of state Brad Raffensperger said the state had also identified the source of bomb threats that briefly disrupted voting at polling places.
“It was from Russia,” he said, without elaborating.
At least seven polling stations in Georgia’s Fulton County were among those facing threats and were briefly closed, South Fulton’s Mayor Kobi told AFP.
“None of the polling places were closed for more than 30 minutes,” he told AFP outside one of them — Feldwood Elementary School in South Fulton.
“There are some people who are trying to discourage people in South Fulton from voting, but we are the Blackest city in the United States,” he said.
“We are the descendants of, the sons and daughters of people who faced lynch mobs, water cannon... to exercise the right to vote. And so we aren’t going to let bomb threats turn us around.”
With Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump deadlocked at the climax of the 2024 race, authorities are keen to reassure jittery Americans that their votes are secure. But they have also bolstered physical security for election operations nationwide.
Poll workers have been given panic buttons, workers, special weapons teams have been deployed on rooftops, and hundreds of National Guard personnel have been placed on standby.
The FBI set up a national election command post in Washington to monitor threats 24 hours a day through election week, and security has been bolstered at many of the nearly 100,000 US polling stations.
The US Capitol Police, who protect the seat of Congress in Washington, said on social media platform X Tuesday that they had arrested a man who “smelled like fuel, had a torch & a flare gun.”
He was stopped at the Capitol visitor center — part of the complex that was stormed by Trump supporters in a deadly riot on January 6, 2021 as they sought to overturn his election loss to Joe Biden.
The visitor center would remain “closed for tours for the day, while we investigate,” the post said.
The bomb threats were not the first time US authorities have pointed the finger at Russian interference during the vote.
Hours before polls opened, officials warned that Russia-linked disinformation operations had falsely claimed attempts were being made in battleground states to fraudulently sway the outcome of the election.
And on Friday, US intelligence officials blamed Russia for a fake video of a Haitian immigrant claiming to have voted multiple times..
The United States previously imposed sanctions on Russian individuals and entities over alleged attempts to interfere in the 2016, 2018 and 2020 elections.
