Washington Post Editorial Board:
A report from New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice this week shows that one-third of election officials feel unsafe, with most saying that social media has made their professions more dangerous. Election workers up and down the ranks have endured death threats, racial slurs and menacing protests outside their homes. One website displayed a state election director’s home address and a photo with crosshairs over it along with a warning: “Your days are numbered.”
These threats continue long after the height of the 2020 vote dispute: In May, Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs tweeted, “Earlier today a man called my office saying I deserve to die and wanting to know ‘what she is wearing so she’ll be easy to get.’ It was one of at least three such threats today. Then a man who I’ve never seen before chased me and my staffer outside of our office.” It is only a matter of time before election officials end up hurt — or worse. Even if the point is merely to intimidate, it is toxic for democracy if voting administrators have to fear what one side may do to them if it loses.
That Brennan Center report includes audio clips of threats being directed at election officials.
The Editorial Board calls on state lawmakers to halt their verbal assaults on election administrators. Voters, too, should reject candidates frothing about bogus “election integrity” issues, the Board insists. Lawmakers might also supply security details for election officials and state-furnished attorneys if they face politically motivated lawsuits. But mostly Republicans should cease their jihad against truth.
This is all nuts, of course. Conservative neighbors who loathe social safety net programs (a.k.a. entitlements) that help Americans they feel are less deserving may deliver “bootstraps” lectures about how life is not fair. Until they feel life has been unfair to them. The sort of people issuing threats against election officials feel pretty damned entitled to certain election outcomes. Their 2020 presidential candidate encourages them whining about how unfair it all was.
But it is not only personal threats eating at election administrators, but new legislation aimed at increasing the mass of the thumb Republicans want to put on the scale.
Lonnie Hollis has been a member of the Troup County election board in West Georgia since 2013. A Democrat and one of two Black women on the board, she has advocated Sunday voting, helped voters on Election Days and pushed for a new precinct location at a Black church in a nearby town.
But this year, Ms. Hollis will be removed from the board, the result of a local election law signed by Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican. Previously, election board members were selected by both political parties, county commissioners and the three biggest municipalities in Troup County. Now, the G.O.P.-controlled county commission has the sole authority to restructure the board and appoint all the new members.
Hollis is one of at least 10 county elections board members removed this way. Five (at least) are non-white. Most are Democrats. The few Republicans removed will be replaced by other Republicans.
These are some of the less-noticed casualties of GOP-led legislatures in the wake of the 2020 elections. More-prominent are changes at the state level:
G.O.P. lawmakers have also stripped secretaries of state of their power, asserted more control over state election boards, made it easier to overturn election results, and pursued several partisan audits and inspections of 2020 results.
Republican state lawmakers have introduced at least 216 bills in 41 states to give legislatures more power over elections officials, according to the States United Democracy Center, a new bipartisan organization that aims to protect democratic norms. Of those, 24 have been enacted into law across 14 states.
Maintenance or purge?
Here it gets confusing. Voter list maintenance is standard practice in election administration. Kris Kobach’s all but disbanded and error-ridden Interstate Crosscheck program gave list maintenance a bad reputation. For good reason. Red states, particularly in the South, relied on it to engage in voter purges mere months ahead of elections. Those delistings tended to flag more “African American, Asian American and Latino voters for removal than Caucasian voters.”
There is a difference, however, between off-year voter list maintenance and voter purges, especially ahead of general elections. States must under federal law maintain the accuracy of registration lists by removing people identifed as having moved within the state, left the state, or died. But with all the GOP efforts to suppress turnout or to pass legislation allowing legislatures to overturn them, even normal list maintenance now draws suspicion.
Georgia’s secretary of state, Republican Brad Raffensperger, issued a statement Friday that 100,000 names deemed “obsolete and outdated” will be removed in the latest update there:
The effort to remove 101,789 names from Georgia’s voter files marks the first time the state has conducted a “major cleaning” since 2019, but Georgia regularly removes the voter files of convicted felons and the dead on a monthly basis, according to the statement.”
The 101,789 obsolete voter files that will be removed include 67,286 voter files associated with a National Change of Address form submitted to the U.S. Postal Service; 34,227 voter files that had election mail returned to sender; and 276 that had no-contact with elections officials for at least five years,” the statement says. “In each of these cases, the individual had no contact with Georgia’s elections officials in any way – either directly or through the Department of Driver Services – for two general elections.”
The full list of “obsolete and outdated” names that are being removed was published publicly with the statement.
In addition to the “obsolete and outdated” files, Georgia also removed “18,486 voter files of dead individuals based on information received from Georgia’s Office of Vital Records and the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), an interstate partnership of 30 states and the District of Columbia focused on maintaining accurate voter rolls,” the statement says.
This non-election-year effort strikes me as normal list maintenance. Unfortunately, the headlines reporting on Raffensperger’s operation oscillate between “remove” and “purge” with little distinction between the two. In fact, purge seems to be the dominant term of journalistic art.
But it doesn’t help that Raffensperger went after voting rights advocate Stacey Abrams in his statement:
“Making sure Georgia’s voter rolls are up to date is key to ensuring the integrity of our elections,” said Raffensperger. “That is why I fought and beat Stacey Abrams in court in 2019 to remove nearly 300,000 obsolete voter files before the November election, and will do so again this year. Bottom line, there is no legitimate reason to keep ineligible voters on the rolls.”
That last sentence is true, but in this environment also inflammatory.
BTW: ERIC is was launched in 2012 with help from the Pew Charitable Trusts.