Politico reports that election workers across the country are bracing for a backlash from supporters of former President Donald Trump during the 2024 election.
The anxiety was on full display at a recent meeting hosted by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, where election workers feared a replay of the 2020 race where they faced an unprecedented wave of violent threats.
"I’m scared to death," confessed Mark Earley, the supervisor of elections in Leon County, Florida, about the prospects of more voter unrest.
Kellie Harris Hopkins, the director of elections in Beaufort County, North Carolina, said at a roundtable discussion at the event that convincing voters that elections aren't being "stolen" from their candidate has proven to be almost impossible.
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“It doesn’t matter what you do, what we say or how much we educate the skeptics," she lamented.
Diane Coenen, the city clerk of Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, said that conspiracy theories blaming local election officials are "getting more and more volatile" and putting workers at risk.
Although the workers at the conference meticulously refused to blame a single political figure or party, Politico notes that surveys have shown it's clear where the threats are coming from.
"Surveys show the deepest voter distrust lies heavily on the right today, and has ticked up on the eve of the next presidential election, even though Trump’s claims have been shot down repeatedly in courts," the publication writes. "A recent Washington Post poll found that fewer Republicans (31 percent) now say Joe Biden’s 2020 election win was legitimate compared with 2021 (39 percent). Overall, just 62 percent of Americans accept Biden’s victory to have been legitimate."
