Fears and suspicion hang over voting on cusp of US election day

WASHINGTON – Election Day voters are going to the polls on Tuesday after a campaign season filled with conspiracy theories, fears and lies that have warped American politics since the past presidential election, and officials worry that they will overshadow 2022’s results no matter the outcome.

Although early voting has been largely uneventful – 40 million Americans have already cast their ballots – the signs of strain are everywhere.

A court ordered armed activists to stop patrolling drop boxes in Arizona. Tens of thousands of voter registrations are being challenged in Georgia. Voting rights groups have trained volunteers in de-escalation methods. Voters have been videotaped by groups hunting for fraud as they drop off their ballots.

Election officials are increasingly on edge, and even Republican ones say they are bracing for a renewed onslaught after Election Day, one most likely to be fuelled by their own party.

“I’ve felt like I’ve been stabbed in the back repeatedly so much that I don’t have anything but scar tissue,” said Mr Clint Hickman, a Republican on the county board of supervisors in Maricopa County, Arizona, home to Phoenix. The county’s election office, which was targeted in right-wing protests in 2020, has beefed up its security, fortifying the building with a new metal perimeter fence.

As Republican candidates across the country continue to amplify former president Donald Trump’s false claims of corrupted elections, officials are readying for disruptions after polls have closed. Activists and lawyers are prepared to challenge ballots and dispute counting procedures, and losing candidates who have cast doubt on the integrity of the process may file lawsuits.

Crosshairs on voting machines and poll officials

More than 100 lawsuits have already been filed – compared with 70 at this point two years ago – a surge of litigation from both parties and their allies. On the Republican side, dozens of lawyers and firms that sought to overturn the 2020 election are again working for parties and candidates this cycle.

Democrats and outside groups have contributed to the litigation, often pushing for leniency in counting absentee ballots and challenging local Republican officials’ plans to hand-count ballots – a nod to newfound, widespread suspicion of electronic voting machines on the right.

In Nye County, Nevada, one such plan to count early ballots by hand has been halted by a lawsuit from the state affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union. In Cochise County, Arizona, a similar effort is being litigated in court.

Even if litigation does not change the results, the 2020 election demonstrated the ability of unsuccessful lawsuits to starkly affect politics in other ways. The many lawsuits filed by Trump campaign lawyers, Republican officials and outside groups in 2020 failed in court, but they seeded a movement of supporters who believe elections are rigged and broken. That movement is responsible for much of the activism and paranoia surrounding this week’s election.

In Clark County, Nevada, home to Las Vegas, election sceptics have monitored the absentee ballot processing, asking questions rooted in conspiracy theories about hacking voting machines.

In Maricopa County, where the first “Stop the Steal” protest was held outside the county Elections Department office the day after the 2020 election, armed volunteers dressed in tactical gear stationed themselves outside a ballot drop box in Mesa, the Phoenix suburb.

Last week, a judge issued a restraining order against the right-wing group, Clean Elections USA, that organised the drop box operation in Mesa, barring its members from openly carrying weapons within 76m of the drop box and from videotaping, following or photographing voters within 22m.

So far, Ms Katie Hobbs, Arizona’s secretary of state, has sent 18 referrals of voter intimidation to law enforcement authorities. In the complaints, which were heavily redacted, voters described being watched, photographed with long-lens cameras and having their licence plates recorded. Some, including one filed on Thursday from a voter in Phoenix’s Central City neighbourhood, came after the judge’s order had been filed.

“I have never been more intimidated in my life trying to vote and standing only three feet from the box,” the complaint said, according to records released by the secretary of state. The voter continued: “Do I need to worry about my family being killed now if the results are not what they wanted?”

Last month in Arizona, an e-mail to election officials promised to “find” their personal addresses and made reference to the violence of the French Revolution. It was referred to the FBI by the Arizona secretary of state.

‘Red mirage’

Led by Mr Trump, Republican candidates and right-wing media figures have stoked fears about “election integrity.” Although there is no evidence of widespread fraud in elections, they led the charge for new laws that tighten voting rules and, as their talking point goes, make it “harder to cheat”.

In some states, Republicans’ scepticism about mail ballots may help recreate a “red mirage”, where the votes cast on Election Day are reported first and heavily favour Republicans, while mail-in ballots, which lean Democratic, come in later. Mr Trump used the trend to falsely suggest that Democrats rigged the results two years ago.

But election denial has spread even to places Mr Trump won handily. In Northern California’s mostly rural Shasta County, where he carried two-thirds of the vote in 2020, tensions over elections and other issues have risen for months. Local activists have demanded a halt to early voting, pushed to count ballots by hand and sought to require voter ID at polling places – none of which are legal in the state.

In some states, such as Ohio and Pennsylvania, voting rights and civil rights groups have trained volunteers in methods of de-escalation, stationing them around polling places and setting up hotlines to respond to problems. In Ohio, for example, a coalition specifically enlisted religious leaders from multiple denominations for the task.

In Georgia, a state with a long history of intimidation and tension at the polls, some community leaders expressed similar unease, amid rising threats of political violence.

“I will admit I’m apprehensive about Election Day because you never know what some people will do,” said Bishop Reginald T. Jackson, who oversees more than 150 African Methodist Episcopal churches in Georgia. “And I look at Arizona, people dressed in these outfits, it can be intimidating.”

More than 65,000 voters in Georgia have had their registrations challenged by fellow citizens, under procedures laid out in a new voting law. Even though most of the challenges have been thrown out, it has unsettled some Georgia voters and tossed some off the rolls.

Ms Barbara Helm, a homeless woman in Forsyth County, Georgia, was forced to vote on a provisional ballot because her registration had been removed during one of the mass challenges brought by Republican voters. Her dilemma was first reported by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

But Bishop Jackson was also buoyed by surging turnout in the state, and pointed to efforts of his church and many other voting rights organisations to ensure voters were prepared for the midterms.

“There’s apprehension, but they’re not afraid,” Jackson said. “Our people are prepared, and we’re prepared to vote.” NYTIMES