Election workers face violent threats and harassment amid dangerous political rhetoric

Read the Full Transcript

• Amna Nawaz:

  Election officials across this country have been under attack since 2020, falsely accused of conspiring to steal or rig the last presidential election.

  This barrage has caused over one in 10 to say they are very or somewhat likely to leave their job before the 2024 election. That's according to the Brennan Center, which tracks this issue.

  William Brangham has more on these attacks and what they mean for our democracy.

• William Brangham:

  That's right, Amna.

  These attacks have stepped up to a dangerous degree in recent weeks, with election officials in five states receiving letters containing a white powder that in some cases was found to be the deadly drug fentanyl.

  We spoke to two officials who received these mailings, Mary Hall, who's the auditor in Thurston County, Washington, and, in Oregon, Dena Dawson, who's the clerk of Lane County.

• Dena Dawson, Clerk, Lane County, Oregon:

  Those of us that were in contact with the suspicious piece of mail were advised to go home and bag our clothing and shower and leave our clothes in a bag outside and wait for further instructions from either hazmat or the FBI. And so that was our day.

• Mary Hall, Auditor, Thurston County, Washington:

  I used to be very proud of my position and telling people what I did for a living. And I don't do that anymore, because you never know what reaction you're going to receive from the people on the other end.

• William Brangham:

  So, what do these threats mean for the future?

  David Becker is the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research.

  David Becker, great to have you back.

  As someone who spends his job trying to make elections smarter and smoother and more accurate, what do you make of all of these offices receiving fentanyl-laced letters?

  David Becker, Center for Election Innovation and Research: Well, sadly, these kind of threats and harassment have been going on now for over three years since the 2020 election.

  This is just a new tactic that the efforts to terrorize these public servants — and let's be sure, as we see these clerks talking about it, these are not jobs that people go into for fame and fortune. They're doing this for service. They are giving us all our voices and our democracy. And they work very long hours all the time. They don't just wake up on the Monday before an election and put on an election.

  And for them to be subjected to constant abuse — and it has been constant. My organization runs a legal defense network, the Election Official Legal Defense Network, to help advise and assist election officials who need assistance in this environment.

  And I can tell you, we have seen as many requests for assistance now, three years after that election, as we did when it was first established over two years ago.

• William Brangham:

  Wow.

  I mean, we should say, in addition to these mailings, the DOJ, I believe, has prosecuted or charged at least a dozen other people for making violent threats towards election workers.

  Do you believe that these threats are a result of this constant barrage of lies and misinformation about the 2020 election?

• David Becker:

  I think there's no question that it's largely due to the disinformation, the lies, the incitement that has gone on from candidates who may have lost that election, others seeking to grift and raise money off of lies about the election.

  There are tens of millions of good Americans who were sincerely disappointed in the outcome of the 2020 election. They're not insurrectionists. They're people who just preferred the candidate who lost. And, unfortunately, we're seeing now that they are the target for these lies and disinformation.

  They are the people who are going to be angry and contribute and donate to people who continue to feed them these lies about the election, an election that by all objective measurements was the most secure, transparent and verified election in American history, more paper ballots than we'd ever seen before, more audits of those ballots confirming the results than ever before, more pre-election litigation confirming and clarifying the rules and more post-election litigation confirming the results.

  We sit here three years from that election, over three years, and there's still not been a shred of evidence presented to any court and subjected to cross-examination that would indicate any problem.

• William Brangham:

  Amna mentioned earlier the number of elections officials who are saying, in the face of all of this, they're thinking about getting out of this line of work.

  How concerned are you about our ability to have a well-trained, nonpartisan group of people to run the next election?

• David Becker:

  The pressures placed on these public servants are more than we should expect anyone to have to endure.

  But I think back to that 2020 election, when election officials somehow, with all of that scrutiny, with all of that abuse, with the lies being spread and with a global pandemic, somehow managed 20 million more voters than we'd ever seen in American history. It's one of the greatest triumphs of the American democratic process we have ever seen.

  Despite that we should have been giving them a parade, they have been subjected to constant harassment. And then, even then, as some decide they can't take it anymore, they have to leave, we have seen, in 2021 and 2022 and 2023, these election officials do what they have always done. They step up and they give us all our voice.

• William Brangham:

  How do we go about countering this?

  I mean, we did see some election deniers in the last cycle lose their elections, but the former president continues his misinformation about his loss. The Wall Street Journal just recently reported that Meta, which controls Facebook and Instagram, is going to allow advertisements to run on their social media networks to carry ads that raise questions about 2020.

  How do we go about batting all of this down?

• David Becker:

  First, we have to understand there's not going to be some magic wand here. We're not going to fix this with a flip of the switch.

  This is — the damage that's been done here is significant, and it's going to take years, if not decades to fix. There are tens of millions of people in this country who believe that, if their candidate lose in a 50/50 country that the election was stolen. We just can't have that sustainable as a democracy.

  That said, I think we're beginning to see some things changing for the better, and I think that largely comes from accountability. There are people at the top who have been intentionally spreading the lies, who have profited off the lies, who seek to retain power and influence because of the lies, and some of them are being brought to justice criminally, civilly in defamation cases, where they're being made to pay very large damages, and even professionally in disbarment proceedings.

  And if we keep seeing this, we may be able to reset the incentive structure, where those who would seek to continue to target a population of people who supported the losing candidate for lies, good Americans, target them so that they can get rich, maybe we can create an incentive structure where no longer they benefit from that.

• William Brangham:

  David Becker, great to see you again. Thank you.

• David Becker:

  Thank you, William.

Improved audio player available on our mobile page