Election workers are scared, but there is hope

by dap | May 5, 2024 | Daily Kos

It’s safe to say that if Americans were fully informed and voting in their best interests, there would be no Republicans. That may sound a tad flippant, but it’s undoubtedly true.

Republicans have long known this, which is why they rely so heavily on divisive culture war issues, rank dishonesty, and voter suppression to ensure that billionaires can continue to be taxed at lower rates than ordinary workers .

What sounds better? Universal access to health care; economy-boosting, green-energy infrastructure investments; reproductive freedom; and a strong commitment to democracy, the rule of law, and our democratic allies—or Vladimir Putin’s best friend appointing three more SCOTUS justices and generally acting like a drunk howler monkey randomly walking into spider webs for the next four years?

We all know the answer.

And so it goes that since the 2020 election, which Donald Trump continues to claim was stolen because he’s an absurd man-child with the intellectual gravitas of a tic-tac-toe-playing chicken, the GOP has added another weapon to its anti-democratic arsenal: sowing fear, chaos, and confusion in our elections.

Unfortunately, Republicans have seen a fair measure of success. A new Brennan Center for Justice survey of 928 election officials across the country reveals that a large percentage of them have been subject to abuse, harassment, and threats, even amid measures enacted to boost election security.

While the poll notes that 92% of those surveyed have “taken critical steps to increase election security for voters, election workers, and election infrastructure since 2020,” 38% of local election officials report experiencing harassment, while “54% are concerned about the safety of their colleagues and staff, and 28% are concerned about their family or loved ones being threatened or harassed.” 

Meanwhile, “62% are worried about political leaders engaging in efforts to interfere with how election officials do their jobs” and, perhaps most alarmingly, “13% are concerned about facing pressure to certify results in favor of a specific candidate or party.”

While much of the chaos surrounding our elections—and the fear that chaos has created in election workers—is the natural outcropping of Trump’s ongoing war against the truth, Republicans appear eager to gut even those common-sense measures that would protect election workers against intimidation and threats.

As elections attorney Marc Elias recently noted , some Republicans seem to think they have a God-given right to harass election workers. A month after the Nevada legislature unanimously passed an “Election Worker Protection Law,” a “dangerous” Republican candidate turned RNC member sued for the right ““to use or threaten or attempt to use any force, intimidation, coercion, violence, restraint or undue influence with the intent to interfere with the performance of the duties of any elections official relating to an election; or retaliate against any elections official for performing duties relating to an election.”

And earlier this year, conservative Arizona groups sued to “block the anti-harassment provisions of the state’s Election Procedures Manual from going into effect.”

Shockingly, the activities the America First Policy Institute would like Arizonans to continue engaging in include “using threatening, insulting or offensive language to a voter or poll worker,” “following voters or poll workers coming to or leaving a voting location, including to or from their vehicles,” and “any activity by a person with the intent or effect of threatening, harassing, intimidating, or coercing voters (or conspiring with others to do so).”

Further, as progressive radio host Thom Hartmann recently wrote , Republicans are poised to reprise a voter-suppression strategy that they used to great effect during the ‘80s: intimidating potential voters at polling places.

In a new column , Hartmann recalls New Jersey Republicans’ 1981 National Ballot Security Task Force, which “recruited hundreds of off-duty cops and private security guards, arming them with guns, walkie-talkies, and armbands that said ‘Task Force.’”

White voters in New Jersey rarely encountered the task force: instead the vigilantes targeted  majority-Black neighborhoods in “Newark, East Orange, Bridgeton, Vineland, and locations throughout Mercer and Atlantic counties.”

When Black or Hispanic voters showed up to vote, the Task Force officers would stop them before they entered the polling place, asking to see their voter registration card and ID. Without explanation, but with the implied violence of police power, thousands of voters of color were simply told that their registrations were “no longer valid” and turned away.

As Hartmann notes, Democrats responded by getting a restraining order against the Republicans, but in 2018, “the GOP sued and got that overturned: they’re now free to repeat their strategy.”

Fortunately, there is some good news on this front. For instance, California election workers have toiled diligently to address concerns surrounding election harassment and intimidation, and their efforts have borne fruit.

According to a March 1 Cal Matters story , the state lost 15% of its election officials between the November 2020 election and July 2021, but as November looms, conditions finally appear to be improving. 

Since 2020, county elections officials have taken a number of steps to strengthen protection of workers — including safety protocols for possible fentanyl-laced envelopes — and to educate people that their vote is secure.

In Orange County, for example, the elections office works closely with local law enforcement and the health department to ensure the safety of election workers and voters, said Bob Page, the county’s registrar of voters.

The county has recruited about 1,600 people to work on elections —  the result of a months-long process that involves outreach efforts, background checks and training.

“We know it’s important to make sure we give people that work in the vote centers the tools to provide good customer service and try to help people who have concerns, or may be a little disruptive when they come in,” Page told Cal Matters. “Safety is something we’re going to keep paying attention to.”

And as we discovered in 2020 , plenty of Republicans who still somehow believe in democracy were more than willing to resist Trump and defy the predictable blowback and “perfect” calls from members of their own party. For instance, Gabriel Sterling, a Republican who defended the results of Georgia’s 2020 election against the fever dreams of Trump and his goofball lawyer Rudy Giuliani, is at the vanguard of an effort to restore the faith in our elections that many less-scrupulous Republicans have spent the past four years eroding.

The Associated Press:

Sterling, the chief operating officer for the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office, is part of an effort begun after the last presidential election that seeks to bring together Republican officials who are willing to defend the country’s election systems and the people who run them. They want officials to reinforce the message that elections are secure and accurate, an approach they say is especially important as the country heads toward another divisive presidential contest.

The group has held meetings in several states, with more planned before the Nov. 5 election.

[…]

“It’s an obligation on Republicans’ part to stand up for the defense of our system because our party — there’s some blame for where we stand right now,” said Kentucky’s secretary of state, Michael Adams, who is part of the group and won reelection last year. “But it’s also strategically wise for Republicans to say, ‘Hey Republicans, you can trust this. Don’t stay at home.’”

Certainly, that’s encouraging, but the fight for democracy requires more than just a nominal number of GOP defenders. And since the party’s honest brokers are clearly outnumbered by its shady shitheels, once again it’s up to Democrats to do the heavy lifting on behalf of democracy.

The only question is, are we ready?

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