Security Review of First 16 Statewide Primaries
An Exchange team look-back at security issues in the first 16 statewide primaries of 2026 describes an election landscape where sparks are popping without igniting.
The most startling incidents involved explosive devices. We reported in our March 11 issue on a flash-bang device tossed from a moving vehicle into the grass outside the park building hosting an early voting site in Moore County, North Carolina. The device produced significant noise but limited explosive force. Moore County law enforcement believes the voting site was the intended target.
In a similar incident last week, an explosive device tossed from one moving vehicle detonated beneath another, “partially destroying it.” The incident occurred a half block from a polling place in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, where voting was underway. The driver of the damaged car spoke to the media without suggesting they were targeted.
With no evidence that the election was targeted, officials kept the polling place open. However, street closures, police activity, and general concerns after the incident may have deterred some voters, as poll workers said that voter arrivals slowed. At press time, two suspects had been arrested, and police still say there is no connection to the election.
These incidents underscore the importance of strong communications planning to reassure voters and describe alternatives, even parking alternatives, that can help them vote with less disruption, while maintaining the security of the election.
In Ohio’s May 5 primary, Exchange sources reported a series of events with some similarity to the Pennsylvania incident. Bomb threats without a clear connection to the election – at zoos, a university, and a school – caused concern among election officials, uncertain how evacuations, rumors, and visible law enforcement responses might impact voters and poll workers.
Shortly before the May 19 Georgia primary, a threatening manifesto and a suspicious object disrupted a gubernatorial campaign event for Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, the state’s outgoing chief election official. As with the Pennsylvania incident, it’s not clear that the motive or disruptive intent had any relationship to his election administration duties.
Other primary news includes a few election mishaps, some likely prompted by late changes to election laws, sites, or procedures. These incidents remind us that issues, small and large, can generate confusion and anger that amplify existing narratives of distrust and create security vulnerabilities.
In Indiana’s May 5 primary, one county made a programming error that led to voters seeing contests that shouldn’t have been on their ballot. Fortunately, the issue affected only local races whose outcomes were not close. Another county failed to include roughly 1,900 ballots that “had been accounted for on Election Night” in the initial, unofficial results. The issue, corrected by the following Friday, changed the outcome of contests for a township board race and a party precinct committee person.
In one Kentucky county, nearly 60 election workers called out or did not show up on the morning of the May 19 primary, requiring the use of 159 alternate workers. Confusion about closing procedures at three affected precincts delayed the release of results. The county clerk noted the small size of the team in her office while lauding their work in navigating the issues.
In Butts County, Georgia, results were significantly delayed when election officials determined that the memory card in an early voting machine was “corrupt”, requiring all the ballots tabulated by that machine to be rescanned. The County Election Director assured the public that all votes were present and accounted for.
More than 12,000 voters went to the wrong polling place in Texas’s March 3 primary, after a party decision forced Williamson and Dallas Counties to change from vote centers to precinct-based voting for that election. The election offices worked hard to communicate the change, but the party decision was made only in January, leaving less than two months for the message to reach voters. The change left thousands of voters from each major party misrouted. The numbers come from a Dallas County effort to text polling place directions to those who initially went astray. Adding voters in Williamson and those who chose not to give phone numbers, the true totals are likely much higher.
In Louisiana and many parts of Alabama, voters in mid-May primaries received ballots with a major contest that was no longer on the ballot. Both states moved their U.S. House primaries to special election dates later in the year in order to use district maps newly allowed under the U.S. Supreme Court’s Callais decision. In Alabama, only four of the state’s seven congressional districts were affected, while primaries in the other three did take place last week.
Because there was insufficient time to reprint, the House contests remained on ballots, with vote totals not tabulated. This may have limited disruption to election offices in both states. An earlier change might have forced a rapid re-mapping in an election where overlapping districts at federal, state, and local levels mean many precinct splits and ballot styles – a recipe for confusion and inadvertent errors.
A common thread across these events is the importance of effective communication with voters when the voting process is disrupted. For additional guidance on communicating during election incidents, review the resources highlighted in the Resource Library section of this newsletter.
The Situation Room focuses on real security incidents and threats in the news relevant to election security. To review previous issues, see the newsletter archive.
