Bomb threats that U.S. officials linked to Russian email domains disrupted what was generally a smooth voting experience across America on Election Day.

They were not the same INTERFERENCE when counting the votes facilities as in 2020, when supporters of then-President Donald Trump falsely claimed the election was rigged.

On Tuesday afternoon, Trump unfoundedly warned of “rigging” in Philadelphia, but those claims essentially stopped when the polls closed and the results began to be reported. Trump won Pennsylvania and the presidency, according to The Associated Press race calls.

The bomb threats – which were directed at numerous polling stations in swing states such as Georgia, Arizona and Pennsylvania – briefly disrupted voting as sites were evacuated and as a result some polling hours were extended by to the courts.

Bomb threats have often been part of pre-election practice scenarios that poll officials have worked on to prepare for this election, said Cait Conley, who oversees election security efforts at the Department of Homeland Security’s cyber agency.

“We could see (voting officials) overcoming these outages to make sure voters had access to the ballot,” Conley said Tuesday. “And I think that’s a tribute to the training and professionalism of the election officials.”

US intelligence officials said the threats seemed to come from from Russian email domains, although it was unclear whether the threats originated in Russia.

Intelligence officials had said before they “observe foreign adversaries, particularly Russia, conducting additional influence operations designed to undermine public confidence in the integrity of U.S. elections and fuel divisions among Americans.”

“Election officials are natural emergency managers,” Chris Krebs, who previously led the DHS cyber agency, said the morning edition on Wednesday. “They know how to deal with things that come up and create adversity.”

Overall, Krebs said they “were by all accounts a safe and secure choice.”

And voters turned out in large numbers. One early estimate by the University of Florida Election Lab, the national voter turnout at 64.5%, which, while lower than in 2020, would be higher than any other US presidential election in a century.

“Yesterday’s turnout demonstrated that, once again, our election professionals ran safe and secure elections in the face of adversity,” Tammy Patrick, a former Arizona election official who is now CEO for programs at the National Elections Association. Officials said via email. “From floods and hurricanes to foreign campaigns of disruption, our election officials have done everything they can with the resources at hand to ensure that certain voters have opportunities to vote throughout the election cycle.”

In North Carolina, election officials said voters in parts of the state devastated by Hurricane Helene outnumbered the rest of the state in early voting.

As with every election, there was human error, such as tab machine doors are not locked in milwaukeeand technical problems at some polling places, including problems scanning ballots in parts of New York and Pennsylvania. A state judge in that closely watched swing state extended the closing time for polls in Cambria County, Pennsylvania, by two hours to give voters more time to cast their ballots on Tuesday.

Some college and university towns saw long lines outside polling stations.

“In my experience, it’s not uncommon for that to happen in a high-turnout, high-interest presidential general election,” Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt said during a news conference Tuesday.

Schmidt, who previously administered elections in Philadelphia, explained that students often end up having to vote provisionally, which can lead to long wait times at the polls because of the time it takes to process those voters.

In a statement Wednesday, the National Association of State Election Directors offered a reminder that much election work remains.

“In the coming days and weeks, election offices across the country will count every eligible ballot to get the official total for every contest on the ballot,” the statement said, “from national contests such as president, down to the smallest office or local issue’.

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