New Legal Defense Fund To Protect Election Workers From The MAGA/QAnon Thugs

The lawless thugs of the MAGA/QAnon cult have been harassing, threatening and intimidating election workers from Secretaries of State all the way down to local election officials who are citizen volunteers, in the hope they will quit, see Election workers departing in droves after “partisan rancor” in 2020, Exodus of election officials raises concerns of partisanship, and MAGA/QAnon cult members will be hired to fill their positions, so that they are in a position to rig the next election for their “Dear Leader.”

This is how democracies die.

This is all part of Dear Leader’s evil plot to destroy American democracy. Trump Angling To Put In Power Election Officials Who Could Twist Vote For Him In 2024:

In what observers call an “incredibly dangerous” move, former President Donald Trump is pushing to replace swing-state election officials with those who backed his rigged election lie.

Trump has already endorsed Republicans who supported his endlessly repeated lies about the 2020 presidential election for top elections posts in three key swing states: Arizona, Michigan and Georgia, CNN noted.

Current elections heads in each of the states resisted his pressure to overturn votes. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger — who’s running again — recorded Trump ordering him in a post-election phone call to “find” enough votes to turn his defeat into a victory.

In his latest endorsement last Monday, Trump pushed state GOP Rep. Mark Finchem for Arizona secretary of state. Finchem has peddled QAnon conspiracy theories and baselessly insists that that 2020 election was stolen from Trump via “rampant” fraud..

“It is incredibly dangerous to support people for office who do not accept the legitimacy of the 2020 election. It suggests that they might be willing to bend or break the rules when it comes to running elections and counting votes in the future,” Rick Hassan, law and political science professor at the University of California in Irvine told CNN. “Someone who claims falsely that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump lacks credibility and cannot be trusted to run a fair election.”

At the end of July, the Department of Justice Launched a Task Force to Combat Threats Against Election Workers:

“To protect the electoral process for all voters, we must identify threats against those responsible for administering elections, whether federal, state, or local,” said Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco. “A threat to any election official, worker, or volunteer is a threat to democracy. We will promptly and vigorously prosecute offenders to protect the rights of American voters, to punish those who engage in this criminal behavior, and to send the unmistakable message that such conduct will not be tolerated.”

“The FBI will not tolerate threats against any federal, state or local election worker participating in the common goals of safeguarding our electoral process and the rights of voters,” said FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate. “From election administrators to volunteers to vendors and contractors, threats against any one individual is a threat against us all.  The FBI’s mission is to protect the American people and uphold our Constitution, and protecting our democratic process is paramount. We take this responsibility seriously and will investigate any and all federal violations to the fullest.”

The task force is leading the Justice Department’s efforts to address threats of violence against election workers, and to ensure that all election workers—whether they be elected, appointed, or those who volunteer—be permitted to do their jobs free from threats and intimidation. The task force will receive and assess allegations and reports of threats against election workers and will partner with and support U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and FBI field offices throughout the country to investigate and prosecute these offenses where appropriate.

Organized and led by Deputy Attorney General Monaco, the task force includes several entities within the Department of Justice, including the Criminal, Civil Rights, and National Security Divisions, and the FBI, as well as key interagency partners, such as the Department of Homeland Security.

The Department of Justice needs the public’s assistance in remaining vigilant and reporting suspected threats or acts of violence against election workers. To report suspected threats or violent acts, contact the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI (225-5324). You also may file an online complaint at: tips.fbi.gov. Complaints submitted will be reviewed by the task force and referred for investigation or response accordingly. If someone is in imminent danger or risk of harm, contact 911 or your local police immediately.

For more information regarding the Department’s efforts to combat threats against election workers, read the Deputy Attorney General’s memo.

The latest from the New York Times, Harassed and Harangued, Poll Workers Now Have a New Form of Defense:

It is perhaps a metaphor for the times that even the volunteer who checked you into the polls in November now has a legal defense committee.

The Election Official Legal Defense Network, which made its public debut on Sept. 7, offers to represent more than just poll workers, of course. Formed to counter the waves of political pressure and public bullying that election workers have faced in the last year, the organization pledges free legal services to anyone involved in the voting process, from secretaries of state to local election officials and volunteers.

The group already has received inquiries from several election officials, said David J. Becker, the executive director of the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation and Research, which oversees the project. Without getting into details, Mr. Becker said their queries were “related to issues like harassment and intimidation.”

The network is the creation of two powerhouses in Republican and Democratic legal circles, Benjamin L. Ginsberg and Bob Bauer. In a Washington Post opinion piece this month, the two — Mr. Ginsberg was a premier G.O.P. lawyer for 38 years and Mr. Bauer was both a Democratic Party lawyer and White House counsel in the Obama administration — wrote that such attacks on people “overseeing the counting and casting of ballots on an independent, nonpartisan basis are destructive to our democracy.”

“If such attacks go unaddressed, our system of self-governance will suffer long-term damage,” they said.

Mr. Ginsberg, who has broken with his party and become a scathing critic of former President Donald J. Trump’s false claims the 2020 election was stolen from him, and Mr. Bauer are themselves election experts. The two men together chaired the Presidential Commission on Election Administration established by former President Barack Obama in 2013, which called — with limited success — for modernizing election procedures and equipment to make voting easier and more secure.

In an interview, Mr. Bauer said he and Mr. Ginsberg were recruiting lawyers for the Legal Defense Network, hoping to build out an organization “so in any state where this happens, we’re in a position to provide election officials who are under siege with legal support.” Dozens already have signed on to the effort, with many more anticipated to join them soon, Mr. Becker said.

The center is nonpartisan, offering to represent election workers of any political bent, whether they work in a red district or a blue one. But as the announcement by Mr. Ginsburg and Mr. Bauer implicitly noted, the problems confronting election workers ballooned only after the 2020 general election, and have come almost entirely from conservative supporters of Mr. Trump and legislators in Republican-controlled states.

One third of election workers say they feel unsafe in their jobs, according to a survey released this summer by the Bipartisan Policy Center and the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. In Colorado, Arizona, Michigan, Georgia and other states, ardent believers in Mr. Trump’s stolen-election lies have threatened state and local election officials and their families with violence and even death. Some election workers have gone into hiding or sought police protection.

Republican-controlled state legislatures have responded to fraud claims by taking control of some aspects of election administration and by making election workers subject to fines or even imprisonment for rules violations.

In Iowa, a new law subjects election officials who fail to follow new voting rules to criminal prosecution. A new Texas law leaves election workers liable for prosecution if they are judged to knowingly obstruct the view of partisan poll monitors. In Florida, a new rule fines local election officials up to $25,000 if they leave ballot drop boxes unsupervised or allow voters to deposit ballots after official hours.

Mr. Becker, of the Innovation and Research Center, called the growing intimidation of election workers unconscionable. “These are public civil servants in most cases,” he said. “They are not people who do this because they want to get rich and famous. They’re doing this out of a sense of [civic] duty.”

The legal network is likely to be valuable precisely because most of the people it will serve are in fact ordinary citizens, said David Levine, an election integrity expert at the Washington-based Alliance for Securing Democracy. Mr. Levine has worked as an election official in the District of Columbia and Idaho.

“It’s hard enough to do your job well when you’re dealing with tremendous stress and working long hours, let alone having to wonder whether your decisions could result in threats to your co-workers and your family,” he said. “It serves an important purpose to say ‘We have your back, regardless of how big or small your election jurisdiction is or how wealthy you or your community may be.’”

Mr. Bauer has mixed feelings about the applause for the new venture.

“It’s hard to say we’re enjoying success because there’s an enormous amount of demand for this kind of support,” he said. “That there is this demand is deeply troubling.”

The one institution that needs to act is Congress. Sens. Manchin and Sinema need to stop being obstructionists, appeasing the tyranny of the minority of MAGA/QAnon Republicans who oppose any voting rights reforms to protect our democracy from the anti-democratic GQP attempts to overthrow American Democracy.

The Brennan Center for Justice urges Congress Must Act to Protect Election Officials:

This spring, the Brennan Center commissioned a national survey of election officials. We found that roughly one in three feel unsafe because of their job, and approximately one in six listed threats to their lives as a job-related concern.

In order for democracy to function, we cannot accept this situation. Election officials across the country, regardless of political affiliation, risked their lives in a pandemic to help us vote safely in 2020, with the highest turnout since 1900. They are being repaid with violent threats and intimidation, political interference, and disinformation campaigns that paint them as cheaters instead of the heroes that they are.

There are several priorities for Congress to consider.

First, violent threats against election officials and associated election disinformation are ongoing problems and they threaten the security of our elections. Congress should provide support for the protection of election officials and workers.

Second, the Election Administration Commission and the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency have worked to help with combating election disinformation and mal-information, or doxing. This includes their work to promote auditable paper ballot systems. This work should continue, with support from Congress.

Third, Congress should protect election officials from partisan interference.

In the spring, we partnered with the Bipartisan Policy Center and the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard’s Kennedy School to conduct interviews and conversations with dozens of election officials and over 30 other experts. The result was a report published last month, and what we learned from these discussions was heartbreaking.

We found that local election officials feel unsafe because they are being harassed and threatened in the wake of the 2020 election. Several of them reported that their family members, including elderly parents and young children, were harassed using crude language or threatened with violence last year.

Multiple election officials told us that the persistent harassment forced them and their families to flee their homes and seek mental health treatment for their children. And when they reached out to law enforcement for help, the response was often insufficient to ensure the official and their family felt safe.

In addition to the appalling harassment and threats, many experienced interference by partisan and political leaders. As president, Trump famously placed a phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, in which he pressured Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes.”

We have found that less sensational forms of this disturbing political interference abound. Many state and local party leaders have censured officials who told the truth and refused to undermine the legitimacy of the 2020 election. A law was passed in Georgia that replaces the secretary of state as the chair of the State Election Board with a legislative appointee. Other states have introduced bills that would criminalize acts like sending mail ballot applications to voters.

Virtually every election official we spoke with indicated that this behavior is partially driven by mis- and disinformation about the election. Lies about the 2020 election, in particular the lie that it was stolen, serve to instigate and legitimate attacks on election officials. One official compared the attempt to combat online disinformation with truthful information to screaming into a hurricane.

Ongoing partisan reviews being conducted or sought in locations like Maricopa County, Arizona, present an example, happening in real time, of how false claims of election discrepancies can be amplified by prominent voices. And the disinformation campaigns they fuel continue to harm election officials. When Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs spoke out against the incompetent review, credible threats against her increased, resulting in Republican Gov. Doug Ducey providing her with a personal security detail.

Our report identifies a number of solutions to these threats to our democracy. These include three ways Congress can help.

First, the Department of Justice recently announced a task force to address the rise in threats and intimidation of election officials and election workers. Legislators should consider funding for safety training, including how to protect one’s personal information, and physical security of election offices.

Second, the underlying problem of disinformation is a task for the whole of society to tackle, and the private sector will likely need to play a large role. Social media companies could choose to promote truthful information from election officials over attention-grabbing conspiracy theories. Hearings like this that recognize the contributions of local election officials also play a role.

Finally, Congress can explore legislation that protects election officials from unwarranted partisan removals…

… As occurred here in Arizona with Republican state legislators temporarily stripping our Democratic Secretary of State of authority over elections and assigning that authority to our Republican partisan hack Attorney General, but only until the next Secretary of State is sworn into office, which they assume will be  Republlican because they intend to rig the next election to make it so.