Bomb threat temporarily stops election vote count in Santa Clara County

SAN JOSE, Calif. - A bomb threat at the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters office on Saturday prompted an evacuation of the building and temporarily halted the election vote count. 

Santa Clara County Sheriff's deputies descended on the election facility at 1555 Berger Drive around 8 a.m. The threat was sent via email on Friday night, but wasn't opened by an employee until Saturday morning.

"Within minutes, deputies responded. Most of the employees were out of the building by the time we arrived," said Brooks Jarosz of the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office, which was joined by other local departments and their K-9 units. "We started going room by room, floor by floor, searching for anything that may be suspicious. This took several hours, because we wanted to ensure that there was nothing in that building that could harm employees."

The lengthy search didn't turn up anything, and the threat was eventually deemed to be a hoax. 

"We lost about five hours of processing time, but that’s not going to impact our certification date," said Michael Borja of the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters Office.  

Despite the scare, election employees quickly resumed the count of more than 193,000 outstanding ballots.

"It’s not easy being an election worker at this time," said Borja.

Santa Clara County was not the only election office to receive a threat.

"The Secretary of State’s office put out a notice saying she’s aware of the threats being made throughout California," said Borja. 

Similar emails have also been fielded at ballot counting locations across the country.

The Santa Clara County Registrar of Voter's office said it was planning to bring in extra workers and work overtime in order to make up for the lost hours on Saturday.