Updated at 5:29 p.m. ET

Georgia’s top election official sounded the alarm Tuesday because he said 1,000 people voted twice in the state’s elections so far this year — although when pressed, he acknowledged he didn’t know whether any of them did so intentionally.

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, made the announcement in a press conference on Tuesday. He said the thousand voters turned in absentee ballots and then voted in person in the state’s June primary, but provided few details apart from that.

He said Georgia is in the midst of attempting to find out more about the cases.

“Every double voter will be investigated thoroughly,” Raffensperger said, threatening felony prosecutions. “A double voter knows exactly what they are doing.”

It’s not clear, however, that is actually the case. Raffensperger only mentioned one person his office knew of who deliberately went in person to a polling place for malign reasons after casting a ballot in the mail.

Making sure a vote gets counted

The number of voters in Georgia who used absentee ballots in the state’s primary increased exponentially over previous years as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. That included tens of thousands of people who have never before voted by mail.

Experts have said all year that increases in voting by mail expected as a result of the coronavirus disaster would contribute to more mistakes by voters.

“The way that [Raffensperger] is phrasing it makes it sound like [voters are] doing it maliciously,” said Tammy Patrick, a former Arizona election official and now a senior advisor for Democracy Fund. “I think that what they will find in their investigation is that voters were trying to make sure they cast a ballot that counted.”

Patrick recalled administering elections in Maricopa County, Ariz., where voters frequently mailed in ballots and then also showed up to vote in person. She often called them after the election to find out why.

“I never once had somebody say that they were trying to vote twice or that they didn’t think I checked,” Patrick said. “What they said was, ‘I know I had to have it back by the close of the polls on Election Day and I didn’t get it in the mail until Friday, or I didn’t get it in the mail until Saturday. And I was afraid it wasn’t going to count.'”

The details in the Georgia situation weren’t clear.

Raffensperger was pressed by reporters about how he knew the voters were intentionally trying to vote twice, and not just making a mistake. Thousands of absentee ballots were rejected this year in Georgia, for instance, because they were received by election officials late.

“That’s why we do investigations,” Raffensperger said, while also mentioning a single instance of a Georgia voter who said he double voted to “prove a flaw in the system.”

Raffensperger added that the double votes did not sway any election results, and he promised that similar issues would not occur in November’s general election.

The announcement followed an earlier flap over double voting sparked by President Trump, who encouraged supporters in North Carolina to vote twice to “test the system,” then appeared to row back, then doubled down with more exhortations to follow a mail ballot with an in-person vote.

Trump has spent weeks sowing doubts about the coming election and focusing special criticism on voting by mail even though that’s how the president himself casts his ballot.

Ballot regulations

In Georgia, voters who request an absentee ballot but want to vote in person instead must sign an affidavit stating they have not voted absentee-by-mail already. Workers at polling sites are supposed to call the county elections office to verify if someone’s absentee ballot has already been received.

The secretary of state’s office said even if someone votes twice, Georgia’s voting system is designed to only count one vote from one person. Part of the state investigation will determine if county officials properly followed that procedure or if some of the double votes were not caught.

As for why a state’s chief election official would hold a press conference threatening felony prosecutions before completing any investigations — at a time when voters nationwide are confused by rapidly changing processes — Suffolk University political science professor Rachael Cobb said the logic was obvious.

“It sounds like another method of voter intimidation,” Cobb said. “Who wants to put themselves in jeopardy of being prosecuted for voting? In a time when there is a lot of confusion about how to vote, where to vote, when to vote … it is terrible to make this kind of blanket statement without providing any evidence whatsoever.”

University of Florida political science professor Michael McDonald also tweeted that “everyone should be deeply skeptical of allegations that jump the gun without careful investigation first.”

Official errors sometimes take place

Sometimes election offices also find that perceived double votes were the result of data entry errors.

Voter fraud in which someone maliciously tries to cast more than one ballot happens at an “infinitesimally small” rate, Cobb said.

Mistakes and confusion are more frequent, albeit still at low levels. There are many reasons a voter could return a mail ballot and then also try to vote in person: either because they were scared it wouldn’t arrive in time, they wanted to change who they voted for, or they just forgot that they sent it in already.

If some of those votes were counted, Cobb said, that should be viewed as an administrative issue that needs to get fixed by the state of Georgia, not a voter conspiracy issue.

“[This] is sowing doubt in our election system,” she said. “And rather than taking the approach of, ‘Oh, my goodness, we have some things to get straightened up in our office before we go into the general election, it was, ‘OK, people, you’re on notice.'”

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Raffensperger and the State Election Board have made a number of changes to voting in Georgia, including the addition of secure 24/7 drop boxes for absentee ballots, allowing earlier processing of absentee ballots and creating a new online absentee portal for voters to request their ballots.

So far, at least 900,000 of Georgia’s 7.4 million voters have requested an absentee ballot for November.

Updated at 8:35 a.m. ET

Almost every structure in the small farming town of Malden in eastern Washington state was destroyed by a fast-moving fire Monday as high winds created what officials described as a firestorm.

According to the Whitman County Sheriff’s Office, 80% of the town’s structures were destroyed. The town of about 200 people is 35 miles south of Spokane in an agricultural region known as the Palouse.

“The scale of this disaster really can’t be expressed in words,” said Whitman County Sheriff Brett Myers in a statement. “The fire will be extinguished but a community has been changed for a lifetime. I just hope we don’t find the fire took more than homes and buildings. I pray everyone got out in time.”

As of early Tuesday there were no reports of injuries from the fire in Malden.

Officials say the fire was fueled by high winds up to 45 mph, standing timber and dry fields. Deputies went door-to-door and used PA systems on their patrol vehicles to tell residents to evacuate immediately. Within hours, most of the small town had burned to the ground.

Malden lost its fire station, post office, city hall, library and most of its homes, according to the sheriff’s office.

Myers said he believed all residents in the area had safely evacuated but couldn’t be sure, according to The Spokesman-Review.

“The fire was too hot and too quick to even get a count,” Myers said.

Malden was not alone in seeing catastrophe on Labor Day — a day Washington Public Lands Commissioner Hilary Franz described as heartbreaking and surreal, due to the intensity of wildfires and the speed with which they spread.

“Today alone, almost 300,000 acres in Washington have burned,” Franz said via social media channels. “Thousands of homes are without power. Many families have had to evacuate their homes and many homes have been lost.”

“At least 80 fires started in Washington in what officials call a historic fire event,” as Spokane Public Radio reports

They’re still taking stock in Whitman County, where the local emergency management agency, the sheriff’s office and fire officials planned to inventory buildings and attempt to contact and account for all residents on Tuesday.

Most of Washington remains under red flag warnings due to the high risk of wildfires. The National Weather Service has declared part of the state and parts of western Oregon as “extremely critical” fire areas.

“We’re expecting east winds and extreme fire danger over the next two days,” Franz said.

The wind poses a double threat, as it can quickly propel a fire and frustrate attempts to combat them. The Cold Springs Fire sprinted 60 miles across Okanogan and Douglas counties in just 20 hours, Spokane Public Radio reports. And the winds drove a mass of smoke and sand into the air, forcing officials to ground firefighting planes and helicopters

“Really our actions are limited to keeping people out of harm’s way and working the edges of the fire as best we can,” Russ Lane, a fire manager with the Washington State Department of Natural Resources, tells the Spokane station.

Franz and other officials are pleading with residents to avoid any activities that could cause sparks and ignite a new blaze.

“We’re still seeing new fire starts in every corner of the state,” Franz said. She added that 90% of the wildfires in Washington’s recorded history have been caused by people.

In addition to Washington and Oregon, parts of California, Arizona and Nevada are seeing “critical fire-weather conditions” the National Weather Service says, citing an ongoing heat wave, very dry fuels, and strong winds that could gust to above 60 mph in some areas.