Election workers in Arizona’s Maricopa County received at least 140 violent threats and harassing messages in the weeks leading up to Election Day, continuing an abusive trend fuelled by election disinformation and conspiracy theories in the aftermath of 2020 elections.
The county, home to roughly 4.5 million people, has been at the centre of Republican-led ballot challenges and baseless accusations of vote manipulation after President Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election, including recent allegations of “vigilante” threats against people casting mail-in ballots to “bully and intimidate” voters.
Reuters reviewed hundreds of documents outlining menacing emails, social media posts and death threats against election workers between 11 July and 22 August.
“You will all be executed,” one person wrote in an email to one county poll worker.
“Wire around their limbs and tied [and] dragged by a car,” wrote another.
Election officials in the state also participated in a drill that simulated a violent attack at a polling precinct in which workers were killed, an attempt to prepare workers for Election Day violence that left participants “understandably, disturbed”, according to emails reviewed by Reuters.
Since the 2020 elections, Reuters has documented more than 1,000 similar messages sent to the people who help run the nation’s elections, including more than 120 that could warrant criminal prosecutions.
The US Department of Justice also has reviewed at least 1,000 threats to election workers within the last year, officials revealed to a Senate Judiciary Committee in August.
That month, the information security officer for the office of Maricopa County Recorder pleaded with the FBI for help.
“I appreciate the limitations of what the FBI can do, but I just want to underline this,” Michael Moore wrote to the bureau, according to Retuers. “Our staff is being intimidated and threatened … We’re going to continue to find it more and more difficult to get the job done when no one wants to work for elections.”
Reuters found that one anonymous sender sent “harassing emails” for near, according to emails county officials sent to the FBI. One message warned the county’s Republican recorder Stephen Richer that he would be “hung as a traitor”.
“I’d like to have a black and white poster in my office of you hanging from the end of a rope,” the email said, according to Reuters.
Scott Jarrett, Maricopa’s elections director, told county officials in August that if permanent and temporary staff do not feel safe, the county will “not be able [to] recruit and retain staff for upcoming elections.”
The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s School of Law has identified Arizona among 10 states – including Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin – at risk of election disruption in midterm elections.
A separate report earlier this year from the Brennan Center found that one in six election workers has been threatened because of their job – targeted as part of a “damaging” and “sustained” attack that threatens to put the nation’s “election administration and our democratic system in serious danger.”
More than half of poll respondents reported harassment on social media, on the phone, or while on the job.
The Brennan Center’s survey found that one in five workers said they might quit before 2024 elections. Among those who said they plan to leave their jobs before 2024 elections, one-third cited political attacks against a process that they know is fair and honest as one of central reasons for leaving.
Last week, a federal judge in Arizona granted a temporary restraining order to block a far-right activist group and its supporters from spreading baseless claims about election laws in the state and staking out and openly carrying firearms near ballot drop boxes,
A pair of lawsuits targeted the group Clean Elections USA after several people, including armed men in tactical gear, were discovered staking out ballot boxes or filming voters and photographing their license plates.
The Arizona Secretary of State has referred 18 cases of allged voter intimidation to the Justice Department.
Complaints to the office include mentions of “camo clad” men watching voters through binocoulars, photographing license plates, and accusing voters of being “mules” – referencing the widely debunked Dinesh D’Souza film that alleges “mules” illegally cast batches of ballots at drop boxes in 2020 elections.
Arizona law allows caregivers to deposit several absentee ballots at a time beloning to people to whom they provide care, including people in nursing homes, assisted living facilities and similar residences.
“I have never been more intimidated in my life [trying]to vote and standing only 3 feet from the box,” one complaint says. “Now that have my Information recorded will they show up at my house ... Do I need worry about my family being killed now if the results are not what they wanted.”
