State officials fear potential violence around false stolen election claims

As officials around the nation address concerns over the integrity of the Nov. 5 election, the secretaries of state from five states and other experts gathered in Omaha to discuss election security and potential violence.

“Election security is not static. Election security is not a one-and-done deal. Election security is dynamic,” said Nebraska Secretary of State Bob Evnen at a press conference announcing the meeting. “If you’re going to continue to address these dynamic challenges to elections, then you do so in a dynamic fashion.”

For nearly four years, former President Donald Trump has repeated false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, resulting in a spike in threats to election workers and voters. Trump’s claims were blamed for the Jan. 6, 2021, attack by his supporters on the U.S. Capitol, where lawmakers were meeting to certify Trump’s loss to then-Vice President Joe Biden.

Evnen and his counterparts from Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and South Dakota met Wednesday at the National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology and Education Center, headquartered at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. The center works with 38 universities across the nation to track, among other things, threats to election workers and election security.

Gina Ligon, who oversees the center, said: “We think we’re actually only seeing the tip of the iceberg when it comes to that increase in the physical violence to election workers, election administrators, particularly in contentious states, swing states that we have been researching. So Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia have seen the the largest spikes in our dataset,” Ligon said.

In an opinion piece in the New York Times, Robert Pape, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, said, “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,” Pape wrote.

Polling done by Pape and his colleagues “found disturbingly high levels of support for political violence” on both sides.

In Nebraska, state and local election officials are getting help from the nonprofit group Civic Nebraska, which is training people to be poll watchers to help report problems at voting precincts.

“Civic Nebraska added substantial training for observers regarding physical security, including what steps observers may take if they witness threats, intimidation, or electioneering at polling sites,” said spokesperson Steve Smith in an email to the Nebraska Independent.

“Elections really aren’t for the government. We run elections for the people of the states,” said Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate. “We run elections for our government because it is how we the people decide that our republic will move forward.”