A meeting between a New Jersey election committee and multiple venues vying to host the gubernatorial and lieutenant governor debates in the fall was halted after a mystery guest dropped a “Zoom bomb” including racist, antisemitic and pornographic materials.
The New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission held a virtual meeting with nine sponsors to narrow down the host for the gubernatorial general election debates and a singular discussion between the lieutenant governor candidates in the fall.
The beginning of the meeting was largely uninterrupted as the ELEC members explained the process and agenda.
The first presentation went off without a hitch.
The second, led by WABC-TV New York/WPVI-TV Philadelphia/Rutgers Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, was plagued with inexplicable noises including alarms, ringtones and explosions, POLITICO reported.
The moderators interrupted to try and patch the source of the interruption and instructed anyone with their microphone still on to mute themselves.
The grating noises stopped for a moment until one of the hopeful sponsors started to speak again. A series of pornographic images, including one with a Swastika, started to flash across the screen.
At the same time, the audio fizzled into a recording of a song that repeated the N-word, according to the outlet.
The chaos ensued for just a minute before the meeting was promptly shut down.
ELEC Chair Thomas Prol reached out to the offices of the governor and state attorney general to investigate the “shocking breach of public trust,” he wrote on LinkedIn.
“They have put their top investigators on the hack that occurred. On behalf of my fellow commissioners and myself, I say this to those responsible: You will not disrupt democracy in New Jersey. We will find you and prosecute you,” Prol wrote.
“My office is aware of the disruption of today’s virtual meeting of the Election Law Enforcement Commission, and the incident is being investigated by the Division of Criminal Justice. We will not tolerate any attempts to interfere with our democratic process,” Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin added in a statement obtained by The Post.
The commission rescheduled the selection process for next Tuesday with additional “safeguards in place,” Prol added.
Zoom bombing was a phenomenon bred from the COVID-19 pandemic as people across the world suddenly relied on the virtual communication platform to work and go to school.
In February 2021, a squadron of Zoom bombers took aim at a New York City Council meeting and flooded the call with a mountain of lewd NSFW smut, including videos of people in the middle of having sex.
Other trolls crashed a virtual AA meeting, taunting the recovering addicts by saying “Alcohol is soooo good.”
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