Election officials ramp up security measures after increased threats of violence, harassment

As a heated presidential race sprints to the finish line, the risk to election workers feels greater than ever.

“We’re implementing emergency badges for our election officials. We have regular patrols of law enforcement around polling places,” Derek Bowens, director of elections in Durham County, NC, said.

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Bowens said the county has a new high-tech facility after a rise in threats against election workers nationwide.

“Badge access, cameras, duress buttons, bulletproof glass, ballistic doors, a separate mail room with a separate exhaust system to deal with potential hazardous substances,” he explained.

Bowens isn’t the only one taking these extreme measures ahead of Election Day.

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A May 2024 survey from the Brennan Center for Justice shows 92% of election administrators increased security for voters and workers since 2020. This includes improving cybersecurity protections and enhancing the physical security of election offices and polling sites.

“I think there’s no cost too big to make sure we’re in a proper position to respond to incidents and to protect our workforce,” Bowens said.

The same survey reveals nearly 40% of election officials have experienced threats, harassment, or abuse this year.

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Bowens said his team had a close call this year during the primaries when a voter showed up at a polling site after it closed.

“They were told, rightfully by the election official, that polls have closed, you can’t come in and vote. That’s, you know, a requirement of North Carolina law, and they made the comment, ‘If I can’t vote with a ballot, I’ll vote with a bullet,’” Bowens said.

Fortunately, no one was hurt during that incident.

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But during a recent election safety roundtable, administrators discussed other potential concerns like guns near polling places.

Santa Fe County Clerk Katherine Clark said some voters open carried at absentee areas and polling sites during the 2020 election, but things have changed since then.

“Now in New Mexico, you cannot open carry into a polling site and actually one of our local communities in the southern part of our county declined to host elections anymore because they still wanted to be able to open carry,” Clark said.

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Currently, more than 20 states and Washington, D.C. limit firearms at these sites.

“We’ve never had an issue with voters violating that statute even when we became an open carry state,” Kurt Bahr, Director of Election Authority for St. Charles County, Missouri, said. “Most of our polling places are schools, churches, city halls, libraries, these are all buildings that are generally gun-free zones to begin with.”

In some states, voters may see more law enforcement during early voting and on Election Day.

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“We may not have somebody at every location because we don’t want to, you know, be intimidating, but we do have the local law enforcement knows where all the polling locations are,” Zach Manifold, elections supervisor in Gwinnett County, Georgia, said.

In neighboring Fulton County, threats to two poll workers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, made national headlines after false accusations of rigging the state’s 2020 election results.

Manifold said he’s seen an impact on staff turnover.

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“We’re all making progress. I think it’s been a rebuild over the last three years,” he said. “But it’s also a lot of learning and a lot of training and so, it’s just been trying to rebuild that knowledge loss.”

Now Manifold said they will have 2,000 poll workers for Election Day and all of them are community members.

“Your firefighters, your police, your teachers, your grandparents,” Manifold said. “We rely on your local community, the people that live in your neighborhood to run your polling location.”

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Some election officials said their biggest concern isn’t November 5; instead, they’re worried about what could happen after Election Day.

“Because typically, that’s when we see protests and challenges and sometimes negative public discourse that can cause safety concerns,” Bowens said.

That’s why Bowens said Durham County will have armed security on site as election workers certify votes just in case there are any disruptions.

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