Around 12:20 p.m., a staff member at the Louisiana Secretary of State's office on Archives Avenue in Baton Rouge came across an unidentified powder that raised concern. The substance in the package remained unidentified, no one was hurt, and law enforcement units had been dispatched to the building, according to a statement from the office.
The office noted that it would be closed for the remainder of the afternoon as a precautionary measure. The posted notice expressed regret for any disruption caused. Details about whether the building had been cleared of occupants went unmentioned in either statement. No comment from Louisiana Secretary of State Nancy Landry had been provided by the time of publication.
The find comes against a backdrop of tampered post turning up at voting administration offices around the nation in prior years. Packages addressed to secretaries of state or election offices turned up in Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Tennessee, Wyoming, and Oklahoma, with authorities in each state verifying their receipt. Both Connecticut and Indiana went on to document further incidents of their own.
Reviewers found the content posed little to no risk across the vast majority of instances examined. Laboratory analysis conducted in Iowa and Kansas found no hazardous properties in the materials tied to those evacuation incidents, and a third package that reached Oklahoma was determined to hold only flour.
The FBI and U.S. Postal Inspection Service took charge of the investigation into the mailings, with the two agencies noting jointly that some of the envelopes held an unidentified substance and that coordination with law enforcement partners was underway to address each incident and retrieve the letters without harm. Simon added separately that those who serve in public office must be able to carry out their responsibilities without facing threats, intimidation, or harassment, which he described as a condition on which democratic governance depends.
A batch of letters deemed suspicious forced a halt to voting-related procedures during November 2023. Four counties in Washington state — King, Pierce, Spokane, and Skagit — saw their ballot-counting facilities temporarily cleared of personnel, according to a statement released at the time by the secretary of state's office. Of the envelopes examined, some held trace levels of fentanyl while the rest were found to carry an inert material.
Testing of those envelopes by the FBI and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, acting together, turned up fentanyl in four of them, the two agencies stated in a joint release. Packages flagged as potentially hazardous, addressed to voting administration offices in Los Angeles and Sacramento, were stopped before delivery. No verification came from state authorities that the envelopes held any harmful materials.
As of Tuesday, the substance detected in Baton Rouge had yet to be identified, state authorities noted.
