What is the Third or Fourth Thing on My Radar? The County’s Director of Elections and Registration Forrest K. Lehman

What is the third or fourth thing on my radar? the county’s director of elections and registration, Forrest K. Lehman, asked. It should be the number one.

Amy Cohen, the executive director of the National Association of State Election Directors, says that the requests for records have hit red and blue counties alike. “Election officials don’t wake up on Election Day or the day before and decide to put on an election,” she said. It takes weeks of preparation for an election.

Sue Ertmer, the county clerk, said her office received 120 requests for records in just a couple of weeks. It gets difficult to get a lot of other things done when you get those types of requests. It is a little overwhelming.

The requests come from different sources, but the election officials noted that the pillow salesman who promotes conspiracy theories has encouraged supporters to submit them. Election deniers offered instructions on how to file records requests at a seminar in August.

“There’s a challenge when you can’t connect the vote to the person, but we’ve largely solved that problem with audits after elections and checking that we’re recording votes accurately,” says Lawrence Norden, senior director of the elections and government program at the Brennan Center at New York University School of Law. “For a majority of American history, elections were held in public, and there was a reason we moved to the secret ballot. Part of it was that people were subject to violence and intimidation, and actually polling places could become violent.”

The Nevada Clerk-Recorder “Faces of Democracy”: Putting America before the State of the Art in Changing the American Elections

Editor’s Note: This roundup is part of the CNN Opinion series “America’s Future Starts Now,” in which people share how they have been affected by the biggest issues facing the nation and experts offer their proposed solutions. The views expressed in these commentaries are the authors’ own. CNN has more opinion.

There are three election workers from California, Michigan and Pennsylvania who all have faced threats in the line of duty and taken precautions to protect our elections.

In places where Mr. Trump won, election denial has spread. Tensions over elections and other issues have been rising for months in Northern California where he carried two-thirds of the vote in 2020. Local activists want to stop early voting, try to require voter ID at polling places, and count ballots by hand because they are not legal in the state.

The elections deniers made me the focus of their anger. They falsely accused me of violating state campaign finance laws, of partaking in unspecified acts of corruption and of lying about my work experience. A mailer that was distributed throughout the county had racist language for me. I had to get a restraining order against one individual who threatened me after it got so bad.

That said, I remain firmly committed to restoring Americans’ faith in US democracy, and so this year I left a 32-year career in government and joined the Committee for Safe and Secure Elections (CSSE), a cross-partisan organization made up of current and former election officials and law enforcement officers with the shared goal of protecting election officials and workers.

Stakeholders from both sides of the aisle must put country before party to keep our elections free and fair. Let an election official show you how it was done if you think that is impossible.

The clerk-recorder in Nevada County is Natalie Adona. She is a member of the California Association of Clerks and Election Officials. Adona is a member of the Bipartisan Policy Center Elections Task Force, an advisory board member for the Election Official Legal Defense Network, an editorial board member for the Journal of Election Administration Research and Practice, and a participant in the Issue. One campaign called “Faces of Democracy”.

Why did the Philadelphia protests turn out so well? Calling the police to investigate how mail-in voter fraud turned out to be a death threat

Many Democrats chose to vote by mail. As a result, when the in-person results came in on election night, Trump was winning Pennsylvania and several other battleground states. Early Wednesday morning, Trump prematurely declared victory. The margin began to thin as mail-in ballots were counted. Trump and his legal team then tried every avenue to stop the count but were unsuccessful each time.

By week’s end, Biden would take the lead and demonstrations in and around Philadelphia would become violent. Even though the initial vote count is largely complete, there is no end in sight as weeks of civil unrest, legal action and intense scrutiny loom.

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

I posted a video on social media to explain that it was not intentional voter fraud but a mistake made by the person who was campaigning for it. Soon after I did it, I unleashed a wave of hate and a death threat. Phrases such as: “We will [expletive]) take you out!” and “Your family!” were contained in the voicemail. You have your life! When you least expect it, we will surround you.

I had two plain-clothes Philadelphia police officers follow me around wherever I went after one of the threats turned out to be credible. I didn’t want to have to explain to my hairdresser who my escort was when I got my hair done.

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

When a Washington Senator’s Bad Idea Becomes a Bad Idea: Lisa Deeley, a Philadelphia City Commissioners Chairwoman, Enlightened about the 2019 November Election

Election Day has always played a big part 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. Back then, our polling place was a barber shop, where I would spend hours spinning on a leather barber’s chair taking it all in.

My barber shop is like mine, but not all American barber shops are like mine. It’s essential that we invest in our teachers and schools so they can teach young people about the importance of democratic ideals.

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 national figure misrepresented what had happened, and pushed my colleagues and I into the national spotlight, when he held a press conference in Michigan in which he claimed that 2,000 votes for one presidential candidate had gone to another.

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

The F.B.I. Elections Committee: Towards a Peace of the 21st Century between Election Officials and Law Enforcement

The committee has come up with a process that election officials and police 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.

It’s my hope that election officials follow our guidelines, so that they can once more do their jobs without fear.

Tina Barton is the former appointed city clerk of Rochester Hills, Michigan, and 2020 Oakland county clerk Republican candidate. She works for The Elections Group as an election expert.

But the broad view belies signs of strain: A court ordered armed activists to stop patrolling drop boxes in Arizona. There are thousands of voter registration challenges in Georgia. Voting right groups have trained volunteers to de-escalate. Voters have been videotaped by groups hunting for fraud.

And election officials say they feel increasingly on edge, ready not just for the frenzy of Election Day but the chaos of misinformation and disputes that may follow.

“I’ve felt like I’ve been stabbed in the back repeatedly so much that I don’t have anything but scar tissue,” said Clint Hickman, a Republican on the county board of supervisors in Maricopa County, Ariz., home to Phoenix.

Like some other election offices, the Maricopa election office has beefed up its security in preparation for Tuesday. After being a target of right-wing protests in 2020, the building has been fortified with a new metal perimeter fence. An email was sent to election officials last month that mentioned the French Revolution and promised to find their personal addresses. The Arizona Secretary of State referred to it as the F.B.I.

Activists and lawyers may challenge the integrity of the voting process after the polls have closed due to the fact that many candidates have cast doubt on the integrity of the process.

It is easy to see the potential hot spots. In Pennsylvania, thousands of ballots have been set aside because they do not include proper signatures or dates. The Supreme Court ruled that they should not be counted in the lawsuit. But the court also ordered election officials to segregate and preserve them, setting the stage for a future legal fight.

A Republican state lawmaker is trying to stop the state from counting military ballots because they suspect security flaws in the system. The lawsuit was filed by the Thomas More Society, a conservative legal group that has backed the election denial movement.

Even if litigation does not change the results, the 2020 election demonstrated the ability of unsuccessful lawsuits to starkly affect politics in other ways. The lawsuits filed by Trump campaign lawyers, Republican officials and outside groups did not win court approval, but they spawned a grassroots movement to believe elections are rigged and broken. That movement is responsible for much of the activism and paranoia surrounding this week’s election.

Democrats and groups outside of the party contributed to the litigation, often pushing for a lighter count of Absentee Ballots and challenging Republican plans to hand-count Ballots.

In Nye County, Nev., one such plan to count early ballots by hand has been halted by a lawsuit from the state affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union. In Cochise County, there is an effort in the courts.

In Clark County, Nev., home to Las Vegas, election skeptics have been monitoring the absentee ballot processing, asking questions rooted in conspiracy theories about hacking voting machines.

In Maricopa County, where the first “Stop the Steal” protest was held outside the county Elections Department office the day after the 2020 election, armed volunteers dressed in tactical gear stationed themselves outside a ballot drop box in Mesa, the Phoenix suburb.

A judge issued a restraining order against the group Clean Elections USA, which organized the drop box in Mesa, prohibiting members from carrying weapons within 250 feet of the drop box, following or photographing voters, and videotaping voters.

“I have never been more intimidated in my life trying to vote and standing only three feet from the box,” the complaint said, according to records released by the secretary of state. The voter continued: “Do I need to worry about my family being killed now if the results are not what they wanted?”

“The secret ballot is really profound—it’s critical to capturing the true will of the people,” says Ben Adida, the executive director of VotingWorks, a nonprofit maker of open source voting equipment. “People who would break your kneecaps or physically threaten you at the polls represent one extreme, but there are also much more subtle ways that undue influence could affect the outcome of an election. Think about people who support a candidate but are not very enthusiastic about it. Do I really want to fight with my employer or spouse? It’s just one vote.’”

Republican candidates and party officials have also encouraged their voters to cast ballots in person on Election Day, reflecting two years of legal arguments and talk claiming that Democrats used expanded access to absentee voting in 2020 to illegitimately win the election. When candidates at a rally called on the crowd to cast their votes in person, they were met with cheers.

“I was an absentee, mail-in voter for years,” said Janelle Black, a homemaker from Phoenix who attended the Lake rally. Ms. Black believed that the 2020 election was stolen and she didn’t trust the secretary of state to ensure a fair election. She wants to vote on that day so it counts. I don’t want to take any risks.

Republicans are skeptical about mail ballots in some states and this may help to create a mirage where votes are reported first and heavily favor the Republican Party on Election Day. Mr. Trump made a false accusation that the Democrats rigged the results two years ago.

“What do you do when you’re scared, and what do you wanna do?” Bishop Jackson, a Georgian woman confronted with a new voting law

In the face of public protest, the county’s chief executive resigned, its health officer quit and the health board publicly denounced the state’s vaccine mandates.

Some voters in the mountains could not get to the polls if the forecast is for more than 10 inches of snow on Sunday night.

In Georgia, a state with a long history of intimidation and tension at the polls, some community leaders expressed similar unease, amid rising threats of political violence.

Bishop Jackson said he was wary of Election Day because he didn’t know what people would do. “And I look at Arizona, people dressed in these outfits, it can be intimidating.”

More than 65,000 voters in Georgia have had their registrations challenged by fellow citizens, under procedures laid out in a new voting law. Some voters in Georgia have been thrown off of the rolls even though most of the challenges have been thrown out. Barbara Helm, a homeless woman in Forsyth County, Ga., was forced to vote on a provisional ballot because her registration had been removed during one of the mass challenges brought by Republican voters. Her dilemma was first reported by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

But Bishop Jackson was also buoyed by surging turnout in the state, and pointed to efforts of his church and many other voting rights organizations to ensure voters were prepared for the midterms.

How Voting Happens: How Privacy is Preserved and Respected during the First Year of the Reionization Era

Nobody wants to live like that and nobody really wants to think we can. But understanding the tangible, everyday scale of these problems — what’s changed and what hasn’t — genuinely isn’t easy.

In endless tension with more abstract questions about the big picture is the practical reality that in a democratic republic, real people, with real lives, set up the voting equipment in a middle school gym somewhere, check you in, hand you a ballot, hand you a sticker, make sure the tabulator is empty before the count begins — the full battery of mundane procedures that start in your neighborhood and filter up through the county and the state and, in a presidential year, all the way up through the country.

Being able to cast your vote secretly is one of two core democratic protections. Individual privacy is the first benefit that comes to mind. Whether using a voting machine or filling out a scannable form, US voters cast their ballots at the polls in privacy booths. And while they must be registered to vote in databases that are often public, the votes they actually cast are totally disconnected from their identities. It is not permissible for family members, acquaintances and political operatives to know for sure how you voted when you vote with them at the same time.