Threats against MI officials and election workers spike amid a ‘climate of hostility'

Threats targeting election officials have been seeing an alarming rise in recent years, with indications that it might be getting worse heading into the November election. According to the latest monthly update from the Bridging Divides Initiative’s Threats and Harassment Dataset, reported events involving threats and harassment targeting local public officials in the U.S. more than doubled in July. “While the vast majority of Americans have joined to reject calls for political violence, the data demonstrates that more needs to be done to protect civic space.” One of the groups assisting the Bridging Divides Initiative is the Brennan Center for Justice, which noted last month that the intimidation of election workers and voters increasingly involved the use of firearms, typically displayed as an intimidation tactic, such as when armed protestors appeared at the home of Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, accusing her of election fraud. “It’s, I believe, intentionally designed to cause … all of us to check out and throw up our hands and say, ‘I don’t know what to believe, so I’m just walking away from all of it.’ Our job as election administrators, as leaders in the state, is to try to change that, to come through the noise and help people see the truth, which is that they have enormous power not just to decide the future of our country and our state, uh, but their own community, as well.” The Brennan Center notes that as threats and intimidation directed at election officials have risen “meteorically” in recent years, and the risk of voter intimidation remains high, more states have recognized the urgency of keeping guns away from elections. Officials say the data indicates that threats and harassment are becoming increasingly normalized at the “hyperlocal level,” described as being specific local government votes, policies, and regulations that are beyond national politics.