Fentanyl-laced envelopes sent to US election officials

Image source, Getty Images

Fentanyl-laced envelopes have been sent to poll workers, sparking investigations in at least two US states, Georgia’s top election official says.

Brad Raffensperger said suspicious letters had been posted this week to vote counters in Georgia and the north-western US state of Washington.

Both states are processing ballots from elections that took place on Tuesday.

Fentanyl is a synthetic painkiller 50 times more powerful than heroin.

It has been blamed for a rise in US drug deaths.

“This is domestic terrorism and it needs to be condemned,” Mr Raffensperger, who is Georgia’s secretary of state, told reporters on Thursday.

“Some people like to call fentanyl a drug. It’s actually poison, it will kill you, it will kill you very quickly, very easily.

“My wife and I lost our son five-and-a-half years ago due to a fentanyl overdose, we know how deadly this stuff is.”

Brenton Raffensperger died in 2018 aged 38.

Five letters were mailed in total – four to Washington state, one to Fulton County in Georgia – Mr Raffensperger said.

The letters to Washington have been intercepted and some tested positive for fentanyl, he said.

The final envelope was still in transit to Georgia, where Mr Raffensperger said officials would provide the overdose-reversal drug nalaxone as a precaution.

His counterpart in Washington, Secretary of State Steve Hobbs, confirmed separately in a statement that election offices in four counties – King, Pierce, Skagit and Spokane – had received envelopes containing “unknown powdery substances”.

Local, state and federal authorities are investigating the incidents, which occurred while workers were counting ballots from the 7 November general election, said Mr Hobbs, a Democrat.

“These incidents are acts of terrorism to threaten our elections,” he said, echoing Mr Raffensperger.

Fulton County in Georgia has been the target of repeated unfounded claims by former President Donald Trump of widespread ballot fraud.

Mr Trump has pleaded not guilty.