Maintaining election integrity never easy. Threats make it more complicated

If you liked January 6, 2021, you might love January 6, 2025.

That riot some 50 months ago assaulted 250 police officers (injuring 174), had seven fatalities, damaged the Capitol (costing more than $2 billion), and led to 1,488 people being charged (with 749 convicted and 467 imprisoned). Urged by Trump, thousands bolstered by the Proud Boys and other extremist groups, some armed, gathered around the Capitol, broke through police lines, and threatened lawmakers and Vice President Mike Pence.

It was the worst attack on the U.S. government since the British burned down the White House in the War of 1812.

The motivation for that insurrection spurred on by Trump drew upon the Big Lie that his defeat came from voter fraud and also from Americans who accepted the conspiracy (debunked by almost 100 state and federal court cases that rejected election challenges because there was no proof)

The lie still lives. People who embrace the falsehood remain. Some are threatening election authorities.

The nonprofit Brennan Center for Justice’s recent survey showed that 38% of local election officials have experienced harassment and threats for doing their job, and more than half are worried about safety for themselves and colleagues.

Of course, people using threats to question the U.S. election system aren’t helping authorities ensure its accuracy.

Since the 2020 election, when Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump, 81 million to 74 million (306 Electoral College votes to 232), there’s been an unprecedented increase in threats to election authorities nationwide.

The hostility, directed against federal, state and local officials, has included violent rhetoric and even gunshots at the homes of election officials (in New Mexico), threats to harm or kill election authorities (Arizona), threatening election workers at a polling place (Florida), texting violent threats to a member of a Board of Canvassers (Michigan), and envelopes with a return address of U.S. Traitor Elimination Army (USTEA) received at various offices, containing a white powder, some of which were laced with fentanyl, according to the FBI.

In Central Illinois, Peoria Election Commission Executive Director Elizabeth Gannon says the possibility of such attacks is less of a disruption than a nuisance.

“It’s emboldened attackers,” she said, noting that her office hasn’t received the USTEA envelopes. “That doesn’t mean there aren’t bad actors.”

So she and her staff are preparing for the worst, participating in exercises organized by state County Clerks, meeting with the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency, part of Homeland Security – which has issued a warning about calls for violence -- plus local officials ranging from the Sheriff and Emergency Management to IT experts.

“I wouldn’t say we’re intimidated,” she continued. “We’re hyper-aware. It’s in the backs of our minds. So we’ve taken precautionary measures.”

Conservative columnist S.E. Cupp wrote about elections’ “New Normal” –

“All this to protect her from … what? From whom? Terrorists? Assassins? Gangsters? Criminals?

“No. All this is to protect her from election deniers.”

Why threaten or try to intimidate neighbors? Partly, Trump is determined to regain office, and his base dutifully follows him, despite his almost desperate zeal for power, possibly to pardon himself for his conviction of violating campaign laws or escape prosecution for illegally retaining classified documents or engineering the 2021 insurrection.

Before Nov. 6, an overall goal is to discourage or suppress turnout, sow doubt about the country’s system, force litigation, and ultimately challenge certification by Congress. After the Capitol was cleared on January 6 and Congress resumed business, 147 lawmakers 50 months ago succumbed to pressure and voted to overturn the U.S. election – 139 Members of the House of Representatives 8 Senators, according to the Office of the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives.

The House could still hold its slim majority this January.

“Such efforts to derail democracy are exactly what our adversaries who oppose democracy desire,” said David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research. “And it appears those that oppose American democracy are preparing to use this tactic in November, if their preferred candidate loses.”

Also not helping election authorities do their jobs – in fact hurting the process – is disinformation, a raging waterfall of sewage shared online and from telecasts and the “bully pulpit” (an apt description of a Trump rally, perhaps).

A common complaint from deniers is the trustworthiness of voting equipment since it’s connected to the internet.

Except it’s not, said Gannon.

“We have paper ballots ever since we replaced our outdated system, from 2006,” she said. “This will be the fifth election using paper ballots. Neither the polling places nor early results are online.”

The process is thorough, she said: Preliminary counts result in unofficial totals, a canvass that can take a couple of weeks yields an official total, followed by a re-tabulation by the State Board of Elections before the count is certified – all with a paper trail if verifications are needed.

Disinformation is getting so extreme it borders on comedy. U.S. Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) this month said hurricane Helene was manipulated by Democratic weather-control technology to steer the storm to Republican areas, which is like calling Dolly Parton’s $1 million donation to relief efforts a PR stunt.

Republican North Carolina State Sen. Kevin Corbin begged people to “help STOP this conspiracy theory junk that is floating all over Facebook and the internet about the floods in WNC.”

John Dixon Keller, principal deputy chief of the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, said the DOJ is already prosecuting and investigating threats against election workers.

“It threatens the foundation of our democracy.,” he said. “Threats do not contribute to the marketplace of ideas. They are condemnable, criminal acts. Death threats are criminal, and they will be prosecuted.”

Indeed, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said, “The nature of these threats is some type of communication, either implicit or explicit, directing a threat of unlawful violence to a member of the election community. It could be an election worker, an election official or a state or local candidate.”

A majority of Americans are alarmed. Two-thirds of Americans think Trump won’t accept the results, according to an ABC News/Ipsos poll. A similar percentage fear violence if voters choose Kamala Harris.

Campaigning, Trump has vowed to prosecute “lawyers, political operatives, donors, illegal voters and corrupt election officials,” and just last month he:

* said he’d challenge absentee ballots from military or overseas voters,

* told Right-wing internet host Tucker Carlson that 20% of mail-in ballots will be fraudulent, and

* claimed, without evidence, that “tens of thousands” of undocumented immigrants have registered to vote.

 

“The poison doesn’t begin or end with Trump,” writes Berkeley professor and former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich. “It includes a Republican vice presidential candidate who calls women who choose not to have children ‘childless cat ladies,’ claims Haitian immigrants are eating people’s pets, won’t concede that Trump lost the 2020 election, and won’t commit to be bound by the outcome of the 2024 election.”

Milton Kidd, an Illinois native now an elections and voter registration director in Georgia, told Stateline news service he’s been stalked and received several hate-filled messages threatening him.

“We’ve reshaped this nation into an uglier, vile, vitriolic spirit that we’re just allowing to continue to manifest,” he said. “I will never let a detractor who calls with vile language deter me from the work that I do.”

 

From coast to coast, election deniers plan chaos

In Illinois, the chair of the state Republican Party, Kathy Salvi, vowed to “make sure that every honest vote is counted,” implying they’re not – and sparking longtime Lake County election judge Laurence Schiller to challenge her to prove there’s a problem.

“Either she doesn’t understand how elections are run in Illinois and how difficult it would be to cast fraudulent ballots,” Schiller said, “or she is just another Trump Republican embracing his big lie.”

Elsewhere, malicious actions are happening enough to cause at least a dozen states to enact new protections for election personnel, and some state governments are scrambling to compel local officials to uphold the law and constitution:

* The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) reports that at least 239 election deniers have positions of authority in eight swing states.

“Our democracy’s firewalls held fast in 2020, but election deniers and MAGA extremists have spent the last four years infiltrating election administration and political party positions in order to disrupt and cast doubt on the 2024 election results,” said CMD’s Arn Pearson. “While it is highly unlikely that these officials, along with deniers in Congress, will be able to prevent certification of the 2024 election results, they are in a prime position to force litigation and delay what should be a ministerial task while they and their allies whip up false claims of voter fraud, non-citizen voting, and a stolen election.”

* At least 70 U.S. elected officials are election deniers, according to investigative reporter Justin Glawe, including Speaker Mike Johnson.

* State officials in Arizona, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin say they’ll force local authorities to certify accurate counts.

* Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, said he will ensure counties follow the law and constitution.

* North Carolina’s State Board of Elections removed two members of one county’s election board for refusing to certify a vote.

* In Mississippi, the GOP wants to invalidate ballots if they aren’t cast on Election Day – even if they meet the legal requirement of having been postmarked by Election Day.

* In Michigan, armed protestors demonstrated outside the home of the state’s Secretary of State, and a member of Kalamazoo’s Board of County Commissioners promised to not certify the 2024 election results.

* A host of death threats were made to the Colorado Secretary of State and staff.

* In Washington state, the Secretary of State was threatened.

* In July, a Nevada County Commissioner, Clara Andriola, is such an election denier she refused to certify her own primary election this summer.