Election officials are installing panic buttons, bulletproof glass, and snipers
With less than a month to go before the election, fear among election workers is palpable
Statistics show that threats to local election officials have increased 73 percent since this time in 2022. Election officials are preparing with panic buttons, bulletproof glass, and sheriff’s deputies at every polling place, while election-worker turnover has reached historic highs.
NPR’s Ailsa Chang reported last week that in Maricopa County, Arizona, officials installed three “spiky” chain-linked fences around the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center in Phoenix, plus additional guards, metal detectors, 24-hour livestream cameras, “secure cages that store the ballots,” and a “closed airspace.” A communications official, Taylor Kinnerup, said:
“This will be even more of a citadel where we have sheriff's deputies on horseback patrolling the facility. We'll have nonuniformed officers in and out of the building as well as throughout the county. We have FBI agents on the ground. We will have SWAT on the roof, and we will have snipers on adjacent roofs.”
Yes, SWAT teams and snipers.
It’s not just election officials who are under attack; law enforcement officers, prosecutors, elected officials, and candidates are also receiving threats.
Bill Gates (not the billionaire we are all thinking of), a Republican member of the Board of Supervisors for Arizona’s Maricopa County, has spoken publicly about his need for professional therapy to deal with the threats he has been receiving. He told CBS News: “This has unfortunately become a way of life, and we’ve invested as a board in metal detectors, in fencing, in cameras…I wish we didn’t have to do this, but we do.”
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We’ve seen this before. This round will probably only get worse.
As I wrote in a column for The Bulwark, let’s not forget Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman, the Georgia election workers who faced the direct result of Trump’s lies and violent rhetoric. Trump falsely accused both Moss and Freeman of taking fraudulent ballots from a suitcase in Georgia. Rudy Giuliani joined Trump in these false accusations and, as a result, got hit with a $148 million jury verdict.
Moss told Congress that she received messages “wishing death upon me. Telling me that I’ll be in jail with my mother. And saying things like, ‘Be glad it’s 2020 and not 1920.’”
She said these attacks destroyed her life.
The most complex threat landscape yet.
Kim Wyman is a top election official at the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security (CISA) and said she’s received threats like “we’re going to hang you” and “I hope somebody puts a bullet in your head.”
Another CISA elections official, Cait Conley, told VOA that the security concerns surrounding this year’s election represent the “most complex threat landscape yet.”
Republican Gabriel Sterling is the chief operating officer for Georgia’s secretary of state office. He is known for his press conferences countering Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election in Georgia. He has told reporters that “the biggest thing I worry about” in 2024 “is the possibility of violence by people who lose.” He explained that poll supervisors in Georgia “are given a direct line to report trouble.”
Sterling added that the threats run the gamut: “Is it somebody yelling at people in the parking lot or is it somebody with a gun?”
What’s swatting?
Swatting is also a popular tactic, with the FBI identifying about 600 swatting incidents just last year. It involves placing hoax 911 calls with a fake crime report to solicit a response from armed SWAT teams.
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