Election Officials Are Being Targeted and Harassed

Since Donald Trump lost the presidential election in 2020, prominent Republican figures have continued to fuel the “Big Lie” of voter fraud and election rigging. The coordinated efforts around pushing this false information have included widespread targeting and harassment of election officials and poll workers.

Many of these workers now feel unsafe at their jobs overseeing and certifying elections, and some are quitting to avoid the threats. In a recent poll from the Brennan Center of nearly 600 local election officials across the country, one in six repor­ted that they have experienced threats because of their job.

Ruby Freeman is a former poll worker in the Atlanta area. Near the end of June, the January 6th House Committee showed a video of Freeman’s testimony about the harassment. In a virtual hearing with GOP lawmakers in Georgia after the election, Rudy Guiliani accused Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss, of processing fake ballots for Joe Biden. He pointed to a surveillance video in which Moss hands her mother a small item, which he claimed was a USB drive. In reality, that item was a ginger mint. Strangers began leaving Freeman and Moss death threats on their voicemails, sending racist texts, and even showing up on their doorsteps.

Freeman said that the threats were so violent and incessant that the FBI advised her to leave her home for 2 months. And Moss testified that she had to go into hiding, change her appearance, and leave her job due to the threats.

Tina Barton, a former Republican City Clerk in Rochester Hills, Michigan faced some of this same harassment after the 2020 election. Tina and her colleagues had already been working late hours due to high voter turnout and the challenges of facilitating an election during a pandemic. And then there were the added pressures of political tensions and scrutiny over every part of the vote process. After a minor mistake with counting absentee ballots was fixed on the morning after the election, Tina, and her small town of less than 75,000 people, were thrust into the national spotlight, with some Republicans stating that the vote count was inaccurate. She received several voicemails with verbal harassment and death threats.

Tina left her city clerk job in 2021 because she wanted to make a bigger impact on her fellow election officials who she saw needed help. She spent time working at the U.S. Election Assistance Commission and is now working as a senior elections expert at The Elections Group. But she still sees more work that needs to be done.

We speak with Gowri Ramachandran, senior counsel in the Brennan Center’s Elections & Government Team.