MARIETTA, Ga. — The election director in Cobb CountyA suburb of Atlanta that is hotly contested in this year’s presidential election recently hosted a five-hour training session. The focus wasn’t just on the basics of running this year’s election. Instead, it brought together election staff and law enforcement to devise strategies to keep workers safe and the process of voting and counting ballots secure.
The additional security measures the office is taking this year include a deputy sheriff at the polls and panic buttons that allow poll workers to contact a local 911 dispatcher.
Cobb County Elections Director Tate Fall said she was motivated to take action after hearing one of her poll workers describe being confronted by an agitated voter during the March presidential election who the worker said was carrying a weapon. The situation ended peacefully, but the poll worker was shaken.
“That made it really real for me: that it’s so easy for something to go wrong in life, period, let alone in the environment of Georgia and elections,” Fall said. “I just can’t have anyone hurt on my conscience.”
Across the country, local election directors are beefing up security ahead of Election Day on November 5 to keep their workers and polling places safe while ensuring that ballots and voting procedures are not tampered with. Their concerns are not just theoretical. Election offices and those who run them have been the targets of intimidation and even death threats since the Presidential Election 2020mainly by people who act on former president The Lies of Donald Trump that the elections were taken away from him due to widespread fraud or manipulated voting machines.
The focus on safety comes as threats of political violence are on the rise. Trump was the target of a potential assassination attempt over the weekend, just nine weeks after another threat to his life. Federal agents last year fatally shot a Trump supporter who threatened to assassinate President Joe Biden, and the husband of the former Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi was seriously injured in a hammer attack by a man who was advertising right wing conspiracy theories.
Last year alone, a window of the Cuyahoga County, Ohio, election office was shot at. Several election offices in five states were letters filled with white powder who in some cases tested positive for the powerful opioid fentanyl, and false 911 calls were made to the homes of top election officials in Georgia, Maine, Michigan and Missouri in a potentially dangerous situation known as swatting.
“This is one of those things that I have to say, it’s just insane, it’s outrageous to me — the election threats against workers of both parties and their families, the bullying, the intimidation,” Jen Easterly, director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency, said at a recent agency-sponsored online event. “These people aren’t doing it for the money. They’re not doing it for the glory. They’re doing it because they believe it’s the right thing to do to defend our democracy.”
Her agency has conducted more than 1,000 voluntary physical security assessments of election offices since the beginning of 2023. Election officials have used that assistance to identify gaps and ask their local governments for money to make improvements.
They were also helped by a 2022 U.S. Election Assistance Commission ruling that allowed some federal money to be spent on security measures such as badge readers, cameras and protective fencing.
Los Angeles County in California and Durham County in North Carolina are getting new offices with significant security upgrades for this year’s elections. They include bulletproof glass, security cameras and badge-only doors. Election workers across the state are also getting new procedures for processing mail, including kits containing Narcan, the nasal spray used to treat accidental overdoses.
A central feature of the new Durham County office will be a mail processing room with a separate exhaust system to contain potentially hazardous materials sent through the mail.
“We have numerous reasons why this investment was critical,” said county elections director Derek Bowens, pointing to threats against election officials in Michigan And Arizona and the suspicious letters sent to offices in Oregon, Washington, California and Georgia.
Bowens and others who have worked in elections for years said their jobs have changed significantly. Threats and intimidation are one reason why some election officials across the country have gone awayIn some places, election workers are trained in de-escalation techniques and how to respond to an active shooter.
“Security to this extent was not on the list before. It is now,” said Cari-Ann Burgess, the chief elections officer in Washoe County, Nevada. “We have exercises that we go through, we have contingency plans that we have prepared. We are being much more cautious now than ever before.”
In Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, about a four-hour drive from where Trump was injured in a attempted murder At a campaign rally in July, election officials estimated they now spend about 40 percent of their time on security and working with local law enforcement and emergency managers on election plans. This includes regular training to prepare for anything that could disrupt voting or ballot counting.
“It’s very volatile and Luzerne County is mirroring what’s happening across the country,” said County Manager Romilda Crocamo, who oversees the elections office staff. “It seems like people are very emotional and sometimes that emotion escalates.”
Crocamo is considering purchasing panic buttons for poll workers who will be at about 130 polling places across the county on Election Day. Pennsylvania law prohibits law enforcement from being at polling places, but Crocamo and her team are talking to local officials about having emergency responders at the locations with radios in case something happens.
Many local officials said they have increased law enforcement presence at election offices, including on Election Night when poll workers bring in ballots and other materials from polling places. Additional law enforcement is also planned in the weeks following Election Day, during vote counting and certification of results.
In Los Angeles, police canine teams will help scan incoming mail ballots for suspicious substances. It’s part of a revamped approach that includes a new $29 million elections office that consolidates operations that were previously scattered across the county.
Dean Logan, who oversees elections for Los Angeles County, said security remains a top priority. He pointed to social media posts suggesting how ballot boxes could be damaged and mail-in voting impeded. He said the white powder letters were designed to disrupt election operations, and that it is the responsibility of election officials to ensure that does not happen.
The office will have 24-hour security and additional staff from the county sheriff’s department will be present. Elections in November.
“It’s important to me that we can tell voters that they don’t have to worry about the security of their ballots,” he said. “We’ve taken steps to keep them safe.”
Election officials say security is a balancing act: ensuring safety, making sure polling places are welcoming spaces for voters, and providing adequate access to election offices so the public can trust the process.
In Michigan Four years ago, a large crowd of Trump supporters created a tense and chaotic scene as they gathered outside the polls in Detroit the day after the election, chanting “Stop the count!” as they banged on windows and demanded to be let in.
Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey said her office is much better prepared this time around, with more cameras, armed security and bulletproof glass. Observers are now checked in and screened by security outside a large room used for counting ballots at the city’s convention center.
“My biggest concern was protecting the staff and the process,” Winfrey said. “And then our building — it may look the same, but it’s not the same.”