What Americans, including myself, face from extremists from the right because people who find any way possible to get a criminal back in office who solidly lost the election. Anyone including psychics, astrologers and politicians should be called out on their subversive views to overthrow democracy and free elections because of a predilection for mass hysteria and cult worship of a political figure similar to Adolph Hitler during the Nazi occupation of much of the world during and before W.War II.
https://apple.news/AlPrpmxaDQIG3WeLqxRi-aAOfficials from counties large and small say they are inundated with false claims, such as unsubstantiated allegations that Chinese hackers siphoned votes or that ballots marked by Sharpie pens were disqualified.
The anger is palpable and personal, leading many to fear for their safety.
On Friday, an orange prison jump suit was delivered to offices of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, addressed to the five-member board, which has strongly denounced a recount of 2020 ballots commissioned by the GOP-led state Senate as a sham.
Threats against the Republican-majority board have picked up in recent weeks, particularly after it refused to comply with the Senate’s most recent demand for access to local computer routers and internal logs, said Maricopa County Supervisor Bill Gates. The board’s stance led some members of the state Senate to call for the supervisors to be jailed and even held in solitary confinement.
Last week, Gates said, the board received a voice mail in which a caller threatened to kill each member and their families.
“This stuff isn’t organic,” Gates said, saying the attacks amount to “a whole dehumanizing of people.”
“It’s that concept that we’re somehow not worthy of respect or safety,” he said. “That we’re traitors.”
Similar examples of intimidation are being reported by local officials across the country, said Liz Howard, the former deputy commissioner of elections in Virginia who now serves as senior counsel to the nonprofit Brennan Center for Justice. “I know of election officials in multiple states who have been forced to leave their homes because of threats against them and their families,” she said.
A study by the Brennan Center released in June found that 1 in 3 election officials feels unsafe because of their jobs, and nearly 1 in 5 listed threats to their lives as a job-related concern.
The study, conducted with the Bipartisan Policy Center and Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, concluded that the toxic environment “represents a mortal danger to American democracy, which cannot survive without public servants who can freely and fairly run our elections.”
On Saturday, the Department of Homeland Security issued a bulletin warning state and local law enforcement officials of potential violence that “may occur during August 2021” fueled by an “increasing but modest level of individuals calling for violence in response to the unsubstantiated claims of fraud related to the 2020 election fraud and the alleged ‘reinstatement’ of former President Trump,” according to a copy obtained by The Washington Post.
“We are currently in a heightened terrorism-related threat environment, and DHS is aware of previous instances of violence associated with the dissemination of disinformation, false narratives, and conspiracy theories about the 2020 election,” said a U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the bulletin.
A survey of election officials by Reed College and the Democracy Fund in the summer of 2020 found that 60 percent of election officials in the country’s largest jurisdictions were considering retirement by 2024.
“It has become really toxic right now, and it’s very hard for someone to continue to do their jobs in this environment,” said Paul Gronke, a professor of political science at Reed who led the survey.
The safety concerns are so serious that Colorado’s director of elections, Judd Choate, said he had to adjust a certification course he teaches for elections personnel — adding a new emphasis on personal security.
“We are in harm’s way as never before,” Choate said.
The threats have grown particularly intense in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, which has been roiled by mushrooming demands by residents for recounts of the 2020 vote in local counties.
One former GOP clerk, Tina Barton of Rochester Hills, Mich., received death threats last year after there was an initial reporting error about the 2020 results in her city that was quickly fixed. “You will pay for your [expletive] lying. . . . We will [expletive] take you out, [expletive] your life and [expletive] your family,” a caller told her in a voice message she provided to The Post. “Watch your [expletive] back.”
Ann Manary, a Republican clerk in Midland, Mich., has worked in the clerk’s office for 31 years and said she has “never seen anything like” the threats, pressure and complaints that have rolled into her office since the 2020 election.
In an attempt to bolster faith in local officials, the Michigan Association of Municipal Clerks passed a resolution last week lauding election workers “for conducting the 2020 elections in a fair, secure, and accurate manner.”
The resolution cited a state Senate report issued in June that forcefully rejected the claims of widespread fraud in the state, saying citizens should be confident in the results and skeptical of “those who have pushed demonstrably false theories for their own personal gain.”
But in a sign of the growing toxicity, the chairman of the Oversight Committee that produced the report, state Sen. Ed McBroom, has found himself reviled by Trump and his supporters, who have asked the state Republican Party to approve a resolution calling for his resignation.
“He doesn’t deserve this,” said Nash, the Livonia clerk who, like McBroom, considers herself a conservative Republican. “They wonder why people don’t want to be public servants anymore. You do your job faithfully, and then get criticized for it.”
Kelly, the Houghton County clerk, said she was relieved that last week’s election went smoothly. But she is now fielding renewed demands for information about the 2020 race and questions about the use of Sharpies and the security of voting machines.
“We have done so many audits and reviews, but I now have new Freedom of Information Act requests for ballots and data and demands again for forensic audits,” Kelly said. “It seems the 2020 election will never end.”
Emily Guskin contributed to this report.
Washington Post
