National
Across the country, local election directors are beefing up their security in advance of Election Day on Nov. 5 to keep their workers and polling places safe while also ensuring that ballots and voting procedures won’t be tampered with. Their concern isn’t just theoretical. Election offices and those who run them have been targets of harassment and even death threats since the 2020 presidential election, primarily by people acting on former President Donald Trump’s lies that the election was stolen from him through widespread fraud or rigged voting machines.
The focus on security comes as threats of political violence have been on the rise. Trump was the target of a potential assassination attempt over the weekend, just nine weeks after another threat on his life. Federal agents last year fatally shot a Trump supporter who threatened to assassinate President Joe Biden, and the husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was severely injured in a hammer attack by a man promoting right-wing conspiracy theories.
In just the last year, a gun was fired at a window of the Cuyahoga County, Ohio, election office, bogus 911 calls were made to the homes of top state election officials in Georgia, Maine, Michigan and Missouri in a potentially dangerous situation known as swatting, and election offices in multiple states were sent letters filled with a white powder that in some cases tested positive for the powerful opioid fentanyl. On Tuesday, the FBI and U.S. Postal Service said they were investigating suspicious packages received by election officials in at least a dozen states, although there was no indication any of them contained hazardous substances.