Inside the El Paso County clerk’s office in Colorado, where officials had gathered in July to recount votes in a Republican nominating contest for this year’s midterms, dozens of angry election watchers pounded on the windows, at times yelling at workers and recording them with cell phones.
In the hallway a group prayed for “evil to descend” on the “election team,” said the county’s Republican clerk Chuck Broerman. “It’s astonishing to me to hear something like that.” The election watchers had showed up to observe a five-day recount of votes for four Republican candidates who claimed the primary was fraudulent in a contest where they faced other Republicans.
Protesters had mobilized outside the clerk’s office, holding signs with the signature “Stop the Steal” slogan of former President Donald Trump and demanding the county get rid of its voting machines.
As the United States enters the final stretch to November’s midterm elections, Reuters documented multiple incidents of intimidation involving an expanding army of election observers, many of them recruited by prominent Republican Party figures and activists echoing Trump’s false theories about election fraud. The widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election as alleged by Trump and his supporters was never proven.
Interviews with more than two dozen election officials as well as representatives of groups driven by false theories about election fraud, and an examination of poll-watching training materials, revealed an intensifying grassroots effort to recruit activists. This has heightened alarm that disturbances in this year’s primary contests could foreshadow problems in November’s local, state and national races.
Officials and experts worry the campaign will deepen the distrust about America’s election process and lead to further harassment and threats to already besieged election workers.
Election officials in three other states — North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada — reported similar incidents. In 16 North Carolina counties alone, officials noted unusually aggressive observers during May’s primary elections, according to a state election board survey. Some attempted to take photographs of sensitive voting equipment or intimidated voters at polling places, in violation of North Carolina’s election laws.
During early voting in Arizona’s Pima County, an election observer was told to put away binoculars; another was caught looking at private voter data, and another was asked to stop making comments about “fraudulent elections,” according to a September report by the county recorder’s office reviewed by Reuters. State law forbids voter intimidation and obstructing election workers.
Pima county recorder Gabriella Cazares-Kelly said her election staff received multiple complaints from voters that individuals were shouting at them from outside the 75-foot circumference around polling stations, where interaction with voters is banned. “The concern is it makes them feel unwelcome,” said Cazares-Kelly.
In Nevada’s Washoe County, people with night vision goggles stood outside the registrar’s building and aimed their cameras at election workers counting votes on primary night in June, two Washoe County officials told Reuters.
Groups that question the legitimacy of the 2020 vote have helped recruit thousands of observers who support dramatic changes to how Americans vote, including doing away with voting machines and returning to hand-counted paper ballots.
Officials say they are concerned observers intent on rooting out so-called voter fraud could cause unnecessary disruptions and long lines at polling places on Election Day.
“It’s a real concern,” said Al Schmidt, a former Philadelphia city commissioner who received death threats after the 2020 election for refuting false claims of voter fraud. “If these people show up to the polls with the intention of disrupting voting from taking place, then I can’t imagine a worse threat to democracy than that.”
Hopefully this doesn’t materialize. But apparently, they’ve got thousands of people signing up and I don’t think they know (or care) that voting isn’t like a town hall meeting where you can storm the place and start screaming at people. I’ll be shocked if this doesn’t happen at least in some places.