Across the country, a surge in election threats has authorities deploying new tactics to protect people and ballots.
By Chris Strohm, Mark Niquette, and David Welch
November 1, 2024 at 11:00 AM EDT
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The squat brick building, 50 miles from the White House, stands as a monument to the hard new realities of American democracy.
Bullet-resistant glass clads the windows. Lockdown bolts secure the doors. Panic buttons dot the walls. Trauma kits — tactical tourniquets, compressed gauze, medic tape — lie at the ready.
The occupant: The Baltimore County Board of Elections.
The 2024 presidential election, only days away, is already unlike any other after supporters of Donald Trump stormed the US Capitol nearly four years ago. Officials across the country are deploying stepped-up security tactics to ensure that this election, like the last one, will be free and fair.
Anxiety is running high inside the nation’s sprawling election system, the patchwork of 10,000 different jurisdictions that underpin one United States. Over the past four years, officials around the country have been harassed and threatened by people who appear to believe widespread lies that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. Now, as a polarized nation hurtles toward another Election Day, the threat of political violence is escalating, authorities warn.
US authorities say they have foiled plots, but there have only been a few isolated incidents of election-related crime and early votes have been pouring in. More than 60 million people had already voted as of Friday.
Yet, from reliably blue Maryland to swing-state Georgia, from city suburbs and to rural towns, the most basic American civic rite has been transformed. Officials are working to provide more physical security for election workers and the ballots themselves, not only on Nov. 5, but until the results can be tabulated and certified, which could stretch out over days and even weeks. The race is so close that the winner could change if anything were to happen to even a small number of ballots in a handful of battleground states.“What worries me? What keeps me up at night? Everything,” says Jared DeMarinis, State Administrator of Elections in Maryland.
DeMarinis and other election officials say they are doing “a balancing act” of providing necessary security while trying not to scare voters away. Election offices nationwide have stockpiled Narcan after some received ballot envelopes last year containing traces of fentanyl. Many are handing out police radios or portable panic buttons. Workers have undergone special training about how to defuse volatile situations and, in many cases, how to deal with active shooters.
Only this week, in the Pacific Northwest, authorities were searching for a person they believe set fire to two election drop boxes. In Michigan, officials were counting early ballots in a secured area blocked off by police and a metal detector at the Huntington Place convention center in downtown Detroit, where Trump supporters tried to stop the count last time. The elections department has a panic button to alert city police if there is a reprise of 2020 election violence.
On Tuesday, Kamala Harris, in her closing argument to voters, again tried to frame Donald Trump as a threat to democracy. Trump, with dark vows of retribution, has portrayed Democrats as an “enemy within” that could wreak havoc on Election Day. Some Republicans have laid the groundwork for an alternate reality if he loses, one in which the integrity of the race is challenged and Trump declares himself the winner.
Trump’s baseless claims that the 2020 election was rigged; the assault on the US Capitol by a mob of his supporters, including leaders of right-wing militias; and, since July, two attempts to assassinate the former president, all point to the same sobering conclusion: The anger stirred by Trump, as well as the anger directed against him, have reshaped the political landscape. Deep fractures over immigration, culture, race, religion and more are testing the guardrails of democracy.
The people who are responsible for the most fundamental aspects of elections — printing the ballots, overseeing the polls, counting the votes, certifying the results — are feeling the strain. The vast majority of election officials, some 70%, according to a survey published in May by Brennan Center for Justice, believed the danger is greater than it was in 2020.
Countless everyday people who check registration rolls, direct people to curtained voting booths, refill coffee urns and hand out “I Voted” stickers have received new training about how to spot trouble and defuse situations before things can turn violent. For many, the worry is that a small incident — a heated word, a simple misunderstanding — could quickly escalate.
“It only takes one person to decide to take violent action against people they think are stealing the election from them at any one of these polling places,” says Alex Strong, a director of development at the University of Arizona who has been a poll worker in Tucson.Since July, US intelligence officials have warned the public and dozens of government agencies about the rising danger of extremist violence. Among the concerns: possible plots to bomb drop boxes used to collected mail-in ballots — a warning that seems prescient in light of this week’s drop-box fires in Oregon and Washington.
The Department of Homeland Security has fanned out. It has assessed the physical security at more than 1,000 election offices and polling locations, conducted more than 700 cybersecurity reviews and held more than 400 training sessions. Homeland Security has also designated the day that Congress is to formalize the results, Jan. 6, 2025, as a National Special Security Event, or NSSE. That is the high-alert level the department assigns a range of major events, from presidential inaugurations to UN meetings, that might be a target of terrorism or other criminal activity.
At a time when social media provides rocket fuel for conspiracy theories and false narratives, the FBI has been warning that foreign actors and cybercriminals are spreading false information to discredit the election. Cyberattacks, whether from home or abroad, are another major worry. Daily threats via voicemail, email, social media and in person are increasing, election officials say. So far, the Justice Department has received around 2,000 referrals about potential threats and opened more than 100 investigations, although most referrals can’t be prosecuted due to constitutional free speech protections.
The response on the ground is unlike anything the country has ever seen. In swing-state North Carolina, Durham County, home to Duke University and the Research Triangle, has moved its election officials into a new, more secure headquarters. The $26-million facility is outfitted with bullet-resistant glass and surveillance cameras. In Wisconsin, another battleground state, Dane County is spending $20 million to turn a former brewery into a secure election site although it won't be ready for this race.
And in hotly contested Pennsylvania, grand prize of swing states, Philadelphia has increased its budget for election operations and associated security to nearly $40 million, more than triple the level in 2019, according to Omar Sabir, a city commissioner.
Like many of his counterparts, Al Schmidt, Pennsylvania secretary of the commonwealth, boils down his long list of worries to a single word: everything.
“It can be about running out of paper — it doesn’t have to be a cybersecurity threat launched by Iran,’’ says Schmidt, a Republican who as a Philadelphia city commissioner in 2020 pushed back on Trump’s false claims of election fraud.In Detroit this week, Daniel Baxter was hoping that two weeks of early voting and nine days to process ballots will make Election Day uneventful, unlike the last one in Michigan. Baxter is chief operating officer of elections in the Motor City, and responsible for overseeing the count.
Security was standing guard outside the ballot processing area at Huntington Place, home to the famous Detroit Auto Show. Inside, beyond a metal detector and behind steel doors, 10 police officers were on patrol where volunteers are counting early ballots. Detroit has limited the number of election observers who will be allowed inside to 24 apiece for Democrats and Republicans.
So far, all is quiet. “Like watching paint dry,’’ Baxter said of the scene.
Billions have been provided by Congress for election security in recent years and officials have spent heavily to upgrade various aspects of their elections, from voting machines to security to training.
That even officials in Maryland are concerned underscores how seriously the threats are being viewed. Seven battleground states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — will play far more pivotal roles in the White House race. But Democrats’ hopes to retain control of the Senate will depend on an unusually competitive race for a once reliably blue seat in Maryland.Baltimore County’s new county election headquarters has been secured in an anonymous business park. Officials are showing their work by having a livestream that includes ballot canvassing to demonstrate the integrity of the process and avoid any suggestion the count might be compromised. Election reporting equipment and pollbook voter information are kept in a secure “war room.”
Despite threats in Maryland (the FBI is investigating suspicious packages that were mailed to election offices from a Maryland address listed as the US Traitor Elimination Army) officials are encouraging people to do their civic duty and vote. Many worry that the heightened security could inadvertently scare away voters and volunteers.
“My hope is that people are not afraid to go vote or to serve,” says Ruie LaVoie, the Baltimore County Board of Elections director, who oversees the 55,000-square-foot site. “You can talk about the threats, but it is better for our voters and our democracy and our country if we instead focus on and talk about all that we’re doing to have safe and secure elections.”
Transparency will be paramount, election officials say. Perhaps nowhere did state officials come under more pressure than in Georgia, where Trump was recorded urging the Republican secretary of state to “find” him enough votes to overturn the results. Trump surrogate Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, also falsely accused two poll workers for Fulton County of counting illegal ballots. (Giuliani was ordered to pay $148 million for defamation.)
And so Georgia, a swing state that will help determine the outcome once again, has stepped up its game. The same secretary of state who Trump tried to strong-arm in 2020, Brad Raffensperger, has provided new tools that will enable voters to contact law enforcement via text. Polling places have stocked Narcan. Workers have undergone de-escalation training.
Fulton County, epicenter of the election interference case against Trump, has spent $30 million on a new election operations center. Votes will be tallied inside a large glass-walled room so the public can watch the count.
Last time, poll workers in Fulton County were falsely accused of trying to steal the election from Trump, says Robb Pitts, chairman of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners. This time, the county is ready.
“I know that the eyes and ears of not only Fulton County, the state of Georgia and the United States of America, but around the world, will once again be focused in on Fulton County, Georgia,” Pitts says. “I am convinced we are prepared.”