Testifying at a Senate hearing this week, Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D) detailed one of the many threats her office received in the aftermath of the 2020 election.
If our voting systems break down, or are compromised by Republican supporters who are willing to violate election laws to make sure Trump and other Republicans, then it’s going to be easier to overturn elections. The cheating on their part, and the lying about cheating they will be yelling at full volume, will be the excuse used to overturn elections across the nation. I can understand why people are fearful of these assholes, they really do appear ready to kill anyone who works an election that their candidate loses, but we’re going to lose the entire nation if dishonest people are running the elections.
This makes it even more infuriating that we can’t get a voting rights act through Congress, and it’s not clear that Sinemanchin are going to allow it to happen. Local folks need federal support to stand up to the terrorism aimed at them, and that’s really what it is.
Working as intended. Understaffing of elections workers will result in further voter suppression. It’s a way of reducing polling places to create bigger lines, a way to create an excuse for underfunding (“you don’t need all this money if you have so much fewer staff”) and a way of creating vote counting delays that can be demagogued as evidence of “shenanigans” having taken place.
Threats and harassment, though notable this past year, aren’t the only motivators for leaving: Roxanna Moritz, five months after winning a fourth term as Davenport, Iowa’s elections officer, told The New York Times in June that she was leaving due to a new law criminalizing certain errors by elections officials.
That is “threats and harassment” – just that in this case it happens to be perpetrated by the Iowa state legislature.
The calls are coming from inside the (state)house.
On the half-full side of the glass, conservatism has been on the flow for arguably thirty years. It’s clearly ebbing now, and we’re just getting started.
Soon, it will be necessary to select election officials and staff in the same manor as criminal juries. It will be an obligation, and your objectivity and unbiased opinions on the outcome will be judged prior to your selection for service.