The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Standing up to threats against election workers
In November 2020, a Michigan elections official looked at her phone and saw a text: “You should be afraid, your daughter should be afraid, and so should (your husband.)” It was accompanied by images of a woman’s naked, dead, mutilated body.
An Arizona election official was told they and their children’s “brain matter [would be] splattered across the sidewalk” in a “mass shooting of poll workers.”
In Florida, a man showed up at a polling place and asked whether he should kill the elections workers one by one, or blow them all up.
Our democracy depends on everyday Americans to help run our elections. Elections workers are our neighbors, our friends, our family. They serve the public, taking time out of their daily lives to ensure voters’ voices are heard and our elections run smoothly.
But since the 2020 election, threats and violence against elections workers have spiraled out of control. As many as one in six election officials have faced threats, including horrific calls for them and their families to be violently killed.
Seeding this movement are dangerous rhetoric and false claims of election fraud that continue to pervade the country’s political debate. As recently as late 2023, 30 percent of Americans claimed to believe that the 2020 presidential election was decided based on widespread voter fraud.
These sentiments remain a dangerous force at the ballot box and elsewhere, with election deniers running en masse to take power at all levels of government. Connecticut isn’t immune: the 2023 Republican nominee for mayor of Derby (and an incumbent alderman) recently pleaded guilty to charges related to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. He had been indicted before he became his party’s mayoral nominee.
Little wonder, then, that veteran election workers are retiring and leaving in record numbers. These public servants certainly don’t get paid enough to take those sorts of risks and abuse. Indeed, in Connecticut, they’re paid very little.
As a state, we have an obligation to protect our democracy by making it clear we won’t stand for political violence, and to stand up for our elections workers by passing laws that prioritize their safety.
That’s why my co-chair Sen. Mae Flexer and I have authored H.B. 5448, An Act Concerning Security of Certain Election Workers and Elections-Related Locations. The bill protects election workers and infrastructure in three primary ways.
First, it protects the identities and home addresses of certain elections workers. Nearly all the incidents of harassment, threats, or doxing have depended on bad actors having easy access to elections workers’ personal information. Under the bill, certain elections workers may file a request with their municipality to prevent the disclosure of their personal information and home address for the 90 days immediately before and after an election.
Second, it would prohibit the possession of firearms or other deadly weapons near polling locations, vote-counting sites, or other key infrastructure. Guns have played a prominent role in some of the most disturbing incidents where election infrastructure has been menaced. Armed groups gathered outside votetabulation centers in Arizona, Nevada, and Michigan in 2020. During Arizona’s 2022 election season, groups of masked men carrying assault rifles and wearing body armor were observed “monitoring” absentee-ballot drop boxes, and ultimately had to be ordered to stay more than 250 feet away by a federal court. The last thing elections workers should be worried about is armed gangs gathering outside their polling or canvassing location.
And lastly, it would enact measures to deter threats, doxing, and harassment against elections workers by establishing serious legal consequences for those who engage in it. Under H.B. 5448, harassing, threatening, or doxing an elections worker would be punishable by a serious term of imprisonment. The victim would also be allowed to pursue the offender for civil damages.
Most importantly, however, this bill sends a message to all who would threaten our elections — and elections workers — that the State of Connecticut won’t stand for such conduct. And it would also tell our elections workers that we have their back. If we pass H.B. 5448, Connecticut will join at least 12 other states — ranging from states like Ohio to Illinois — that enacted similar measures.
So, I hope you’ll urge your state legislators to protect our elections workers — and our democracy — by supporting H.B. 5448. You can make your voice heard by signing up to testify (or submitting written testimony) for its March 13 public hearing in the Government Administration and Elections Committee.
Our election workers stand up for our democracy every year. It’s time to show them we’ll stand up for it — and them — as well.