Opinion | I Study Political Violence. I’m Worried About the Election.
As we approach the presidential election next month, our election sites and officials may be in considerable physical danger — and the safety of the ballots and the integrity of the vote count could also be at risk.
Over the past four years, an alarming number of election officials and workers nationwide have been intimidated or threatened by people who appear to believe the widespread lies about voter fraud and rigged voting machines that supposedly helped steal the 2020 presidential election from Donald Trump. Since 2021, the Department of Justice has charged more than a dozen people across the country with threatening election workers. President Biden said on Friday that while he was confident that the election would be “free and fair,” he was not sure that it would be “peaceful.”
The good news is that local officials and the Justice Department have taken some steps to address the problem. There are sporadic reports of election directors in this or that town who have increased security, for instance by enlisting additional police protection. And last month Attorney General Merrick Garland, citing the “unprecedented spike in threats” against those who administer our elections, announced the convening of a task force to “aggressively investigate and prosecute threats” to election workers.
The bad news is that these commendable efforts are not enough. Election officials are not law enforcement professionals; they lack the resources to adequately provide for their own security. And while federal prosecution is essential, it is not the same thing as protection.
State governors, especially in the seven swing states, need to provide more for the physical security of election workers and the ballots themselves, not just on Election Day but also through the tabulation of the vote and its certification by Congress on Jan. 6, 2025. If the election is as close as current polls suggest, the destruction of even a small percentage of ballots in a swing state — be it deliberate destruction or inadvertent damage by rampaging protesters — might jeopardize our ability to determine the winner of the election.
In addition to the “unprecedented spike in threats” that Mr. Garland cited, there is other worrisome evidence suggesting the possibility of violence. At the Chicago Project on Security and Threats, a research institute that I run at the University of Chicago, we have been conducting quarterly national surveys of Americans’ attitudes toward political violence since the summer of 2021.
