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This year's midterms are not shaping up to be normal elections. In an environment in which one party is gripped by skepticism and denialism about foundational democratic processes, new avenues are opening for voter intimidation and election interference -- a stress test that could be a small taste of what is ahead in the 2024 presidential election.
Early signs of danger are popping up across the map at multiple levels in the election system.
Threats against voters: In Arizona, Maricopa County officials say men wearing tactical gear and masks have been observing a ballot drop box in Mesa, a Phoenix suburb. Voters have complained about these menacing figures to the Arizona secretary of state's office, one alleging that the watchers photographed them and accused them of being what some on the right refer to as "mules" -- that is, people who illicitly collect and deposit ballots in drop boxes.
This is all, sadly, unsurprising. After Joe Biden narrowly won Arizona in 2020, Donald Trump and his allies refused to accept defeat. Arizona's Republican-led state Senate conducted a partisan "audit" of the results that found nothing of concern -- but still fueled unfounded doubts.
A Reuters-Ipsos poll released Oct. 26 showed that 43 percent of Americans are "concerned about threats of violence or voter intimidation while voting in person," and two-thirds worry that "extremists will commit acts of violence after the election."
Americans might even have to worry that the Election Day worker helping at the local polling place, once a symbol of civic spirit, might be a partisan agent seeking to claim nonexistent fraud or engage in other misconduct. Last month, a first-time Republican poll worker in Michigan was charged with two felonies after he inserted a personal flash drive into an electronic poll book that contained sensitive voter information. Kent County, Mich., officials had to conduct a vote audit and decommission equipment.
What to do to protect the system: In this country's decentralized voting system, state and local officials are the first line of defense. States such as Colorado, Maine and Oregon have recently passed laws specifically aimed at protecting election workers, but most states have not. So the burden is on local officials. State and local police, meanwhile, should enforce aggressive voting-security laws already on the books, such as Arizona's banning armed people from being within 75 feet of a polling place.
What to do to encourage more voting: Since the 2020 election, Republican legislatures have passed a wave of restrictive voting laws -- 42 of them in 21 states, with most already in place for the midterm elections, according to the latest tally by the Brennan Center for Justice. In general, it is harder to cast ballots in red states than in blue ones, a recent analysis in the Election Law Journal showed.
That is why it is imperative for the federal government to act. Congress should boost federal penalties for threatening election workers. It should also reempower the Justice Department, which has seen its tools under the Voting Rights Act stripped away by the Supreme Court. Most urgent right now, in the absence of new legislation, is for the department to send monitors to places where intimidation is likely to happen -- and to investigate and prosecute it where it occurs.
Finally, Congress should send a lot more money to states to secure and improve voting. Federal funds could finance election technology upgrades, poll-worker training (the quality of which varies widely from place to place) and voter education.
* Guest editorial excerpt by The Washington Post.