Election workers are being forced to go through security training and learn new safety protocols because of threats from Donald Trump’s supporters and election lies promoted by Republicans.
Deidre Holden, an elections and voter registration supervisor in Spaulding County, Georgia, discussed the issue in an interview with ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday.
“The most important thing is to get those voters out and get them to safety, and fight for your life if you have to,” Holden told ABC as she tried to hold back tears.
The district where Holden works has historically supported Republicans, but she said that her office received threats from Trump supporters after President Joe Biden won Georgia in the 2020 election. Holden took note of one email to her staff that said, “We’ll make the Boston Bombings look like child’s play at the poll sites in this county.”
Holden’s office has installed new security cameras and has purchased supplies of the overdose medication Narcan in case a chemical agent is sent in with absentee ballots.
The office also has a panic button to call emergency services, which other Georgia officials have also said they will install ahead of the election.
A recent poll from the Brennan Center for Justice found that 92% of 928 election officials surveyed nationwide have taken steps to increase security after the last election.
Following the 2020 election, a pair of Georgia election workers, Wandrea "Shaye" Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, were the subject of harassment and threats after Donald Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani spread election-related lies about them. Giuliani falsely accused the pair of manipulating absentee ballots in favor of Biden while working as poll workers.
“I literally felt that someone would attempt to hang me and there was nothing anyone could do about it,” Moss testified in 2023 at their defamation lawsuit against Guiliani. A jury ruled in the women’s favor and awarded them $148 million.
Those judgments have not deterred Trump and others in the Republican Party.
Trump has made threats in speeches and on social media against unnamed people he claimed were planning to interfere in the election.
“Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country,” Trump wrote in one social media post.
Trump has also continued to promote the falsehood that Biden stole the 2020 election. His running mate, Sen. JD Vance, has tried to avoid commenting on the issue by claiming that he and Trump were “focused on the future.”
Speaker Mike Johnson used a similar tactic during an interview on “This Week,” complaining that anchor George Stephanopoulos was playing a “gotcha game” by asking if he agreed with the fact that Trump lost.
“You want us to litigate things that happened four years ago when we’re talking about the future. We’re not going to talk about what happened in 2020,” Johnson declared as he danced around the question. “This game that’s played all the time, I’m not going to engage in it. We’re not talking about it.”
