The “Big Lie”: Reply to Critics, Report to the Commission on Elections, and an Attorney General William L. Levine

“I think the concern that we find ourselves in is that the ‘Big Lie’ has been a sort of like a virus that has spread throughout nearly every part of American society, including right into the poll worker ranks,” Levine told NPR. There are few instances of rogue poll workers. They have been identified and addressed when they have occurred.

One figure who is trying to recruit right-wing activists to work as poll workers and watchers is a conservative lawyer named Cleta Mitchell.

In Michigan’s Kent County, a Republican who had never worked as a poll worker before was charged with two felonies in August for allegedly tampering with an election computer.

Levine said potential poll workers who have a level of distrust in the elections process may be doing the wrong thing for the right reasons — breaking the rules to ensure nobody else breaks the rules.

The committee has developed a five-step process that election officials and law enforcement can follow to better prepare for elections. It states that election officials and law enforcement should meet, share their situational knowledge, agree on a vision for establishing order and safety around election spaces, plan for a variety of possible disturbance scenarios and practice their responses ahead of each election.

The supervisor of the election in Bartow County, Georgia, said he trusts his team when it comes to recruiting potential poll workers, as the county doesn’t have a stringent vetting process. Instead, he relies on informative training and the code of conduct to ensure poll workers understand their roles and responsibilities.

How to Be Outraged by Insider Attacks: A Closer Look at How Electors Will Get Their Oasis

“If they violate our code of conduct we will take the appropriate action,” he said. “I think it’s important for the community to know that we take that code of conduct seriously and hold ourselves to that standard.”

Levine, of the Alliance for Securing Democracy, favors a rule where tasks are completed in teams of two. This includes everything from opening equipment to checking voters in, using peer-to-peer accountability as a system of checks and balances.

Craig Latimer, who runs elections in Hillsborough County, Fla., says voters have reached out with questions related to conspiracy theories — some of whom want to be more involved in the election process.

“We know that there are people who don’t believe in poll workers,” he said. “I don’t have a problem with that at all.” I’d like for them to come in and see what the real process is.”

Levine said that the most likely scenario was that Americans would lose confidence in the electoral process due to concern among poll workers and isolated incidents. He said the best way for the public to help thwart insider attacks is to show up on Election Day in force.

Levine told NPR that it’s critical that people are involved in the process. I think the higher the turnout the less likely bad actors will be involved in American elections.

The Loss of Democracy: How I Was Served in Nevada County, California, and How I Wanna Be Done That Ignored Politics

CNN started a series called “America’s Future Starts Now” in which people say how they have been affected by the biggest issues facing the nation and experts propose solutions. The views in these commentaries are not those of the authors. CNN has more opinion.

The stakes have never been higher. We are bombarded by social media, the press and politicians with words like fraud, infiltration and manipulation, to name a few. What all of this has led to can be summed up in one word – doubt. People believe that their vote wasn’t counted. They doubt the integrity of election officials. They doubt that the equipment is programmed correctly. Doubt has empowered people to verbally attack election officials and send anonymous letters.”

The day after Election Day in Nevada County, California, was quiet and calm as I help run the voting process. People in this purple county cast their votes by mail. And those who did come to vote in-person cast their ballots in an orderly and respectful fashion.

I was the target of these elections deniers’ frustration. They falsely accused me of violating state campaign finance laws, of partaking in unspecified acts of corruption and of lying about my work experience. Some even subjected me to racist vitriol in a mailer that was distributed countywide. It got so bad at one point that I had to get a restraining order against one individual who threatened me.

I don’t want to lose my job or role in protecting democracy. And in the years and months since the 2020 election, my office has worked tirelessly with local, state and federal partners to improve communications, strengthen security protocols, mitigate threats and increase staff training opportunities.

To keep our elections free and fair, Stakeholders from both sides of the aisle need to put country before party. An election official will show you how it is done if you think that is impossible.

Natalie Adona is the clerk-recorder elect, a non-partisan office, in Nevada County, California. She is a member of the California Association of Clerks and Election Officials. Adona is a member of the editorial board for the Journal of Election Administration Research and Practice, an advisory board member for the Election Official Legal Defense Network, and a participant in the Issue. There is a campaign called “Faces of Democracy”.

The emergency management agency in Philadelphia called the city government to take part in a exercise on the eve of the 2020 election. During that time, a facilitator presented a set of worst-case scenarios, and everyone worked on addressing the problems that arose.

The final scenario – called “contested election results” – involved Donald Trump winning on election night, but the race still being too close to call. Trump would declare victory despite hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots remaining to be counted.

By week’s end, Biden would take the lead and demonstrations in and around Philadelphia would become violent. There’s no end to civil unrest, legal action and intense scrutiny as the initial vote count is largely complete.

During this somewhat prophetic scenario, I watched the top officials in the room express serious concern. As extreme as this scenario sounded, it also felt entirely plausible.

I didn’t fully understand how much of a risk this would all pose to me, at the time. When I ran for city commissioner, I began every speech by explaining that the commissioners run Philadelphia’s elections. This had typically been a low-profile office that served a critical democratic function but carried a relatively low profile and security risk.

The votes were still being counted in the convention center and I decided to leave the area to get some air. A member of Trump’s Pennsylvania campaign filmed me being attacked by a group of people outside. After the video of me was posted on the dark corners of the internet, I received a barrage of attacks, some mocking my appearance and weight – an experience all too familiar to women in politics — and some even threatening my life.

One of the threats turned out to be credible, and I had two plain-clothes Philadelphia police officers assigned to follow me wherever I went – including the bathroom. I avoided engaging in basic daily activities, such as getting my hair done, because I did not want to have to explain to my hairdresser who my escorts were.

Election Day 2016: When Sarah and Lisa Deeley (R-La Michigan) were Infuriated and Unsure about their Electoral Public Service (after the 2020 Election)

Election Day has always played a significant role in my life. My mother was the local committee person in our neighborhood. Since she was a single mom, wherever she went, I followed – including the polls on Election Day. The barber shop was our polling place and it was where I spent hours spinning on a leather barber’s chair.

I don’t have a barber shop like my mother does. We need to give our teachers more money and make them better at civic education and teaching democratic ideals to young people.

Lisa Deeley, a Democrat, is the chairwoman of the Philadelphia City Commissioners, a three-member bipartisan board of elected officials in charge of elections and voter registration for the city of Philadelphia.

Much of it dates back to 2016, when a hand recount of the election results in Michigan was requested (then halted), and the Russian attempt to interfere in our politics and social media – ripe with disinformation and misinformation about the presidential election – began to play a larger role in electoral politics.

Not surprisingly, it led some to doubt our very election process. Doubt in this process, which began as a seed, had grown into an invasive weed choking the profession four years later.

The November 2020 election only reinforced my worst fears. I had just overseen the administration of the most challenging election of my career, and all eyes were on Michigan. Unfortunately, my team and I made an error in resubmitting an absentee voter file on election night – a mistake we quickly caught and corrected the morning after the election.

A leading national figure held a press conference in Michigan that exaggerated what had happened, and pushed me and my colleagues into the national spotlight.

I was one of the election officials who was made out to be an enemy of the people. And the ongoing attacks against officials like me have, unsurprisingly, led to large numbers of resignations – and the loss of many years of election experience and knowledge with it. Meanwhile, confidence in our democratic processes – and the people responsible for them – has only continued to decline.

It is my hope that more election officials follow our guidelines, so that public servants can once again do their jobs without fearing for their lives.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/13/opinions/us-election-workers-voting-threats-roundup/index.html

Correlating Unidentified Voter Drop-offs at a Mobile Early Voting Drop Box: A Call for Improved Voting Access in Harris County

Tina Barton was appointed the city clerk of Rochester Hills, Michigan, and is running for county clerk in 2020. She is employed by The Elections Group as a senior election expert.

Murphy Hebert, a spokeswoman for the secretary of state’s office, confirmed to CNN that a report of voter intimidation has been referred to the US Department of Justice.

The unidentified voter reports that they were approached and followed by a group of individuals when the voter was trying to drop off their ballot at an early voting drop box on Monday, according to Hebert.

Stephen Richer, the county’s recorder, held a news conference last week and told reporters that people were recording voters at the Mesa drop box. The initial reports were followed up with a new complaint.

The Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee and the Houston Mayor are among the top officials from the county who claimed the moves by the secretary of state’s office were a ruse to interfere with the November election.

The office of the Secretary of state said that the teams are necessary because of their findings in an auditing of the 2020 presidential election in Harris County.

The election of Donald Trump to the presidency in the state of Texas gave Republicans a reason to start an audit to undermine the results of this year’s election.

In a letter to the Harris County elections administrator, the director of the forensic audit division said that they had identified several mobile ballot boxes from the 2020 election that did not have a proper chain-of-Custody.

The chair of the Harris County Democratic Party said in a statement that the Gov. Greg Abbott and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton are trying to destroy voter confidence with a pressure campaign designed to intimidate election workers. The letter from the secretary of state’s office was like an attack on drive-through voting, which expanded voting access during the Covid pandemic, he said.

The secretary of state said the suggestions from the three Harris County officials were false and an attempt to deceive voters, the press and the federal government.

Taylor also told CNN in an interview that the inspectors are employees of the secretary of state’s office or other state agencies, but cannot be there on behalf of an elected official. The inspectors are permitted to observe, but not allowed to interact with voters – or to speak to anyone other than the presiding judge at the election location.

Holly Manbeck, a lifelong resident who’d driven her mother to drop off her ballot, said she’d heard, “there is supposedly a lot of fraud going on,” though she explained, “I just know what I hear in the media.” But Manbeck wondered about the priority of assigning deputies to drop-box duty. She said she doesn’t want her streets to be unsafe because police are watching a box.

Berks County Commissioners expressed their frustration at local residents buying into election conspiracies. The Commission Chairman asked residents to stop being caught up in the crazy accusations that are out there about the county, because the county cares about election integrity.

Some of them are connected with groups that claim to have the right to ignore federal or state laws they deem unconstitutional, and intervene in elections. While they make up a tiny minority of sheriffs across the US, these law-enforcement officials could play a vital role in efforts to cast doubt on elections and make it easier for partisan officials to overrule voters’ choices this fall and in 2024.

Sheriff Mark Lamb, of  Pinal County, Arizona, has perhaps been the most vocal of the bunch. He co-founded Protect America Now, a group that claims to be engaged in “a battle for the soul of America.” Berks County Sheriff Eric Weaknecht is among about 70 sheriffs that are members of the group.

Emails obtained by CNN through public records requests show Lamb has reached out to sheriffs across the country to tell them things such as “Here’s how YOU can enforce election integrity.” In the emails, his group recommends sheriffs increase “patrol activity around drop box locations” and engage in “video surveillance” with “access points directly on Sheriff Department computers.”

The group also asks “patriots” to report suspected vote fraud to a hotline it operates in conjunction with the Texas-based election-conspiracy group True the Vote.

A spokesman for the group said in a statement that attorneys from True the Vote are trying to have the information released because the court did not follow their guidelines in applying the restraining order. The group said it was not true and that it was payback for the AG’s decision to ignore suspicious voting activity.

Mack is a former board member of the anti-government Oath Keepers, whose founder is currently on trial for seditious conspiracy in connection with the January 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol.

The messages are getting receptive ears. At a July event in Las Vegas featuring CSPOA and True the Vote, Sheriff Richard Vaughan of Grayson County, Virginia, said that after watching “2000 Mules” – “if the federal government is not going to investigate that, I think the sheriffs should.”

Even though there is no evidence of widespread fraud, the Johnson County Sheriff spent months investigating conspiracy claims about vote fraud in that state. He continues to insist that the 2020 election was rigged, even after he admitted that he hadn’t found probable cause of any crimes. I believe that the people that are running the elections don’t know what is going on. I think they’ve been programmed in by some foreign entities, and they are manipulating the vote,” he said in a video posted in September to the online platform Rumble.

In Michigan, Barry County Sheriff Dar Leaf is under investigation by a special prosecutor in regards to an alleged criminal conspiracy to obtain access to voting machines.

David Mahoney, former president of the National Sheriffs’ Association, said such sheriffs represent a tiny fraction of the country’s more than 3,000 sheriffs, most of whom reject such ideas. He said in his career he never investigated election fraud because the responsibility was with county clerks or state election officials.

Pennsylvania forbids police officers from being near a polling place during an election in order to protect voters from being intimidated. Berks County has a policy that violates the spirit of the law, if not the letter of the law, if it is found to be equivalent to a ballot drop-box.

The presence of law enforcement at drop boxes is unnecessary since they are located in secure locations, according to Schneider Marian. There’s a risk of crossing the line to voter intimidation when law enforcement is directly engaging with voters.

Chapman sent a letter to the district attorney of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, back in May, after he ordered investigators to watch the five different drop boxes during the primary election partly in person and via video feed. Jim Martin, the Lehigh district attorney, told the Morning Call newspaper he’d spoken with Chapman and agreed to send her a report on his monitoring efforts.