Nothing came of the threat, but Holden said she pays more attention to security issues than she did then.

Credit: Steve Schaefer /

Credit: Steve Schaefer /

Election officials in Georgia and across the country are bracing for threats and harassment ahead of the hotly contested November presidential race. A recent survey by the New York-based Brennan Center for Justice found 38% of local election officials have experienced threats, harassment or abuse.

More than half of election officials surveyed said they’re concerned about the safety of their colleagues and staff. Nearly 1 in 3 worries about threats to their families.

Gowri Ramachandran, director of elections and security at the Brennan Center, said threats and harassment have escalated since 2020, when then-President Donald Trump falsely claimed voting fraud cost him the election.

“Local election officials say, repeatedly, they think disinformation about elections is part of the problem,” Ramachandran said.

Numerous state and federal investigations found no credible evidence of widespread fraud in 2020, and Trump now faces criminal charges in Georgia and Washington for his efforts to overturn the election. But he continues to claim the election was rigged and to suggest this year’s election might be stolen if he loses.

The allegations have helped fuel rancor in an already overheated political environment — one that has seen the “swatting” of numerous public officials, a threat to blow up a local Democratic Party office, threats against the district attorney prosecuting Trump and the attempted assassination of Trump himself.

In such an environment, many election workers — once seen as neighborly and patriotic — now endure the hostility of suspicious voters from across the political spectrum.

“Everybody’s so mad. They have a chip on their shoulder,” Holden said. “They’re mad at the world, and they come in taking it out on us.”

Distrust fuels threats

U.S. elections depend on hundreds of thousands of poll workers, many of them temporary employees drawn from the ranks of retirees and others who can work long hours for days or weeks leading up to and following election day.

It doesn’t pay much — Gwinnett County, for example, pays $160 and up for election day clerks. But many take pride in what they consider a patriotic service.

“It’s a very important job. It’s very important to democracy,” Ramachandran said. “But it’s not, historically, been a very glamorous job.”

As distrust of elections has spread, many workers now worry it’s a dangerous job. A series of high-profile incidents has not reassured them:

“If we want our country back we have to exterminate these people,” Stark wrote, according to court records. He later pleaded guilty to one count of sending a threat using a telecommunications device and was sentenced to two years in prison.

“This (expletive) is rigged, Trump called it months ago,” one email stated, “and until Trump is guaranteed to be POTUS until 2024 like he should be, we will bring death and destruction to defend this country if needed and get our voices heard.”

The writer threatened to “make the Boston bombings look like child’s play at the poll sites in this county” — an apparent reference to the 2013 bombing at the Boston Marathon that killed three people and injured hundreds more.

That bomb threat marked a turning point for Holden, the Paulding County election director.

“That was when it became a reality to me,” she said. “OK, there are some crazy people in this world.”

Credit: Steve Schaefer /

Credit: Steve Schaefer /

Tensions escalate

Other unsettling incidents have dogged Georgia election workers.

During the 2021 U.S. Senate runoff, a Bartow County poll manager and her assistant were packing up for the night when they noticed someone observing them from behind a nearby building “in some creepy sort of way,” Election Director Joseph Kirk said.

When they drove back to town, “they were followed and almost run off the road,” Kirk said.

But election directors say most incidents amount to angry people expressing what Kirk called “general animosity.”

At a recent Cobb County election board meeting, a poll manager recalled a man who wanted to vote in a race that he said was not on his ballot. The worker said she tried to address his concerns and defuse the situation. But he became louder and angrier until everyone around them stopped to watch.

After several minutes, she said the man whispered an apology.

“That voter was armed, even though it’s against the law to bring a weapon into a polling place,” the poll manager said.

Holden, the Paulding County election director, said she catches grief from people on both ends of the political spectrum. During May’s primary election, a man yelled at her that the election was rigged.

“He turns around and screams to everybody, ‘Y’all are so afraid of President Trump!’ ” she said.

During the same election, Holden spoke with a woman who was angry because she hadn’t received her absentee ballot. Holden tried to tell her she’d emailed her application to the wrong address.

“She screamed at me, ‘I guess all of you voted for Trump!’ ” Holden said.

With another bitterly contested presidential election approaching, election officials are boosting security.

Cobb Election Director Tate Fall has asked for sheriff’s deputies to staff all 12 of the county’s early voting sites. The County Commission also recently approved Fall’s request for more than $60,000 in other security measures, including a security guard for her office and “panic buttons” that allow poll managers to contact police in an emergency.

“This idea of poll worker safety is what keeps me up at night,” Fall told the election board recently

Kirk, the Bartow County election director, also has employed panic buttons, which he likens to the silent alarms that bank employees trigger during a robbery. Other Georgia counties use a texting system that connects them to law enforcement during an emergency.

Holden finds herself taking precautions that never would have occurred to her a few years ago. Her office keeps a supply of Narcan, a medicine that can rapidly reverse the effects of an overdose from opioids such as fentanyl. She also trains her staff to deal with bomb threats and to de-escalate confrontations with angry people.

It’s not just election workers she’s worried about.

“I am so concerned about the safety of our voters come early voting,” Holden said. “If voters even knew the lengths that we go to.”

Ramachandran sees such actions as a hopeful sign ahead of the election. According to the Brennan Center survey, 92% of U.S. election officials have taken steps to improve security since 2020.

“It is shocking,” she said. “But one thing I can say is that our survey shows local election officials and their staffs are really rising to the challenge. They’re doing everything they can to make sure that voters are safe and staff are safe.”

But it may take a widespread change of heart about elections and election workers to address the problem in the long run.

“Hopefully,” Ramachandran said, “Americans treat these workers as the heroes they are.”