Arizona poll workers endure right-wing midterm threats

Election workers in a hotly contested Arizona county have endured more than 100 violent threats and intimidating messages leading up to Tuesday’s crucial midterms, most of them based on thoroughly disproven lies about Democratic voter fraud that former President Donald Trump and his allies have repeated ad nauseam for the past two years.

“The harassment in Maricopa County included menacing emails and social media posts, threats to circulate personal information online, and photographing employees arriving at work,” Reuters reported Sunday, citing nearly 1,600 pages of documents it obtained through a public records request.

The election office for the Phoenix-area county logged “at least 140 threats and other hostile communications” between July 11 and August 22, the news outlet noted.

“You will all be executed,” reads one. “Wire around their limbs and tied & dragged by a car,” says another.

As Reuters reported: “The documents reveal the consequences of election conspiracy theories as voters nominated candidates in August to compete in the midterms. Many of the threats in Maricopa County, which helped propel President Joe Biden to victory over Trump in 2020, cited debunked claims around fake ballots, rigged voting machines, and corrupt election officials.”

Information about the prevalence of poll worker intimidation over the past two and a half months did not find mention in the news outlet’s report.

However, an early August email from Scott Jarrett, Maricopa’s elections director, to county officials warned that a group of self-described “First Amendment Auditors” wearing tactical gear had walked around his department building on August 3—photographing workers and their vehicle license plates one day after the August 2 primary—and vowed to keep up their surveillance through the midterms.

Just two weeks ago, armed individuals in Maricopa County extended the right-wing’s anti-democratic intimidation campaign from election workers to voters—sitting outside a ballot drop box in the town of Mesa.

Nationwide, Reuters has documented more than 1,000 intimidating messages to election officials since the 2020 race, including more than 120 that legal experts say may warrant prosecution.

“Many officials said they had hoped the harassment would wane over time after the confirmation of 2020 results,” the news outlet reported Sunday. “But the attacks have persisted, fueled in many cases by right-wing media figures and groups that continue without evidence to cast election officials as complicit in a vast conspiracy by China, Democratic officials, and voting equipment manufacturers to rob Trump of a second presidential term.”

As of September 13, over half the country—55% of the population, living in 27 states—had an election denier running to oversee their elections, according to States United Action. Election deniers are on the ballot for the November 8 midterms in 50% of gubernatorial races, 44% of races for secretary of state, and 33% of races for attorney general.

According to a survey conducted earlier this year by the Brennan Center for Justice, one in six election officials have experienced threats related to their job, and 77% say that they feel such threats have increased in recent years. One in five election officials plan to step down before the 2024 election, with many citing ongoing intimidation.

Originally published at Commondreams.org.