Georgia officials say they thwarted an attempt to crash a state election website

Gabriel Sterling, chief operating officer for the Georgia Secretary of State, rolls a 10-sided die as part of process to randomly determine which batches of ballots to audit for a state-wide risk limiting audit of the 2022 general election during a press conference Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2022, at the Georgia Capitol in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Ben Gray)

Georgia election officials acted quickly earlier this month to thwart an attempt to flood the state’s absentee voter portal in an apparent attempt to crash the site, the secretary of state’s office said.

The attack was limited to that part of the state’s website, which voters use to request an absentee ballot. Users may have experienced a brief slowdown, but the site never crashed and no data was compromised, said Gabriel Sterling, a top official at the agency.

He said it was not clear where the attack originated. There has been no public indication that similar systems in any other state were subject to the same kind of attack.