Santa Clara County elections office evacuated after bomb threat, authorities say

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- The Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters Office was evacuated on Saturday morning after a bomb threat that was sent on Friday evening by email was seen by an employee.

Four K9 units from the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office, the Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety, and Stanford Department of Public Safety responded to the building at 8:17 a.m. Saturday, according to Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office spokesman Brooks Jarosz.

About 100 employees who were inside still counting and processing votes from Tuesday's general election were evacuated by the time sheriff's deputies responded minutes after they were dispatched, Jarosz said.

"We should applaud the Registrar of Voters Office because immediately after they saw this threat, they evacuated the building before we even arrived," Jarosz said.

He said a security perimeter was set up around the building while the K9 teams made a thorough search of the building, going room to room, but did not find anything suspicious as of 1 p.m. Saturday.

"The sheriff's office and county security are working together. I saw a few puppies over here sniffing and working," said Michael Borja, with the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters Office, to ABC7.

Registrar's staff was allowed back into the building once the search was complete.

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There were about 192,000 ballots still to be processed as of Friday at 5 p.m., according to the Registrar of Voters Office

The bomb threat was sent via email to the Registrar of Voters Office sometime Friday evening, according to Jarosz, but it wasn't seen until this morning. He said he could not elaborate on its origins, but that the message implied harm would come to those inside the building.

The bomb scare comes after multiple bomb threats were received in Georgia and other polling places around the country on Election Day, according to the FBI.

"The FBI is aware of bomb threats to polling locations in several states, many of which appear to originate from Russian email domains. None of the threats have been determined to be credible thus far," the FBI said in a statement on Tuesday.

"Election integrity is among the FBI's highest priorities. We will continue to work closely with our state and local law enforcement partners to respond to any threats to our elections and to protect our communities as Americans exercise their right to vote," the statement said.

There was no indication that the threat against the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters Office fit that pattern, but Jarosz said the Sheriff's Office was ready to respond to such threats.

"We are always prepared to respond to any kinds of threats that would hurt people in the communities we serve or undermine fundamental democratic rights," he said.

He said the Sheriff's Office bomb squad was notified but was not ultimately dispatched because nothing suspicious had been found by the K9 teams.

KGO-TV staff contributed to this report