A new program will help local elections officials with legal assistance and technical needs that come along with increased threats to their work and their lives, especially during the heated 2024 election cycle.
The Public Rights Project’s election protection hub plans to reach more than 200 elections officials, targeting states with close races but open to local elections officials anywhere in the US. Their work will include legal representation for local officials, filing amicus briefs on behalf of elections officials in critical court cases, helping them respond to misinformation, elevating them as trusted resources for voters and standing up for local interests in battles against state legislatures. They also plan to fight against efforts to hand-count ballots and litigate any challenges made by others to tabulation, as well as push back against frivolous public records requests that have hit some elections offices.
The non-profit’s move comes as local elections officials report ongoing threats and harassment, often stemming from mis- and disinformation spread by politicians. A stream of elections officials have left their jobs after enduring years of these attacks on their jobs. Some have seen the threats against them result in criminal charges for those who called, emailed or posted online claiming they would injure or kill people running elections.
Alongside these threats, elections officials are also seeing efforts by lawmakers and other elected officials in their states to alter the way they administer the vote, sometimes without taking into account the needs of the people who actually run elections on the ground.
“It’s death by 1,000 cuts for these local officials,” said Jonathan Miller, an attorney with the Public Rights Project. “We just think it’s really important for these noble public servants – they’re doing it because they believe in the right to vote, they believe in supporting their communities – to make sure that they’re given the support that they need, so that they can do their jobs, because ultimately the ability to run the elections rises and falls with local officials.”
The project, founded by Jill Habig, the former special counsel in then-California attorney general Kamala Harris’s office, focuses its overall work on state and local issues and officials, including elections, reproductive rights and instances where states attempt to infringe the rights of local officials. Habig, an attorney, recently filed an amicus brief in the US supreme court case over Trump’s potential disqualification from office because of the 14th amendment, where she wrote alongside historians who argued from an originalist perspective that Trump should be removed from the ballot.
The Public Rights Project has previously filed supporting briefs in elections-related cases to elevate the voices and interests of local elections officials. The group envisions doing more of the same in cases this year, intending to protect people’s votes and elections officials’ ability to do their job without interference from states or outside actors. The organization’s legal support is offered free of charge for these officials as part of the hub.
Clifford Tatum was one of those local officials who could have used assistance from the hub. Tatum, who is now consulting with the project on this new program, was the elections administrator in Texas’s Harris county, until a new state law that targeted the county closed his office and distributed its duties to other county officials. Tatum said he would not be an elections official again – “I’ve shared my level of blood, sweat and tears” – but he wants to use his experience to help others in similar positions through the hub’s work.
His brief time running elections in the county included professional and personal attacks, some stumbles with paper shortages and wait times in the 2022 midterms, lawsuits against the county over those mistakes, a criminal inquiry, calls for his resignation and, finally, the dissolution of the office. He had moved to Houston in summer 2022, giving him just a few months to prepare for that year’s election.
While he had resources to defend the county’s actions while he was the election administrator, he did not have the ability to defend himself or his own legal interests with county resources, a scenario where a program like the election protection hub could step in.
“I felt isolated. I felt that I wasn’t able to control the narrative and if you lose the narrative, you basically lose the war,” he said.
After his office and the county saw threats online against Tatum, he needed a daily security detail. The security team drove him to and from work, was with him all day for any meetings or movements. If he needed to run an errand, the security came along. When he initially moved to Houston, he purposefully chose a secure building, knowing the level of vitriol that often comes with working elections these days.
“It really changed the way I lived in Houston and experienced Houston, Harris county, because I just didn’t know what was waiting for me out there,” Tatum said.
