Arizona Election Workers Receive Death Threats Because People are Allowed to Say Things

If claiming that the 2020 election was fake leads to violent threats, then what does claiming that Trump supporters are violent terrorists lead to?

In theory, injecting “believing something I don’t like causes violence” should be mutual, and no one should be allowed to believe anything that anyone else disagrees with.

Reuters:

Election workers in Arizona’s most fiercely contested county faced more than 100 violent threats and intimidating communications in the run-up to Tuesday’s midterms, most of them based on election conspiracy theories promoted by former President Donald Trump and his allies.

The harassment in Maricopa County included menacing emails and social media posts, threats to circulate personal information online and photographing employees arriving at work, according to nearly 1,600 pages of documents obtained by Reuters through a public records request for security records and correspondence related to threats and harassments against election workers.

Between July 11 and Aug. 22, the county election office documented at least 140 threats and other hostile communications, the records show. “You will all be executed,” said one. “Wire around their limbs and tied & dragged by a car,” wrote another.

The documents reveal the consequences of election conspiracy theories as voters nominated candidates in August to compete in the midterms. Many of the threats in Maricopa County, which helped propel President Joe Biden to victory over Trump in 2020, cited debunked claims around fake ballots, rigged voting machines and corrupt election officials.

How can Reuters just declare this? This is not an op-ed. It’s written by the Jews (and apparently a Korean woman).

But how is it possible that the public can take seriously the fact that Reuters is inserting editorial commentary about the threat of free speech into a piece claiming to be a news article?

It is very far from settled that the election of 2020 was legitimate, but claiming that having the opinion that it wasn’t legitimate leads to violent threats is an extreme assertion.

Other jurisdictions nationwide have seen threats and harassment this year by the former president’s supporters and prominent Republican figures who question the legitimacy of the 2020 election, according to interviews with Republican and Democratic election officials in 10 states.

The threats come at a time of growing concern over the risk of political violence, highlighted by the Oct. 28 attack on Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband by a man who embraced right-wing conspiracy theories.

…

Since the 2020 election, Reuters has documented more than 1,000 intimidating messages to election officials across the country, including more than 120 that could warrant prosecution, according to legal experts.

So what are the other 880? If they couldn’t even possibly warrant prosecution, then they are not actionable threats. All actionable threats against individuals could warrant prosecution.

The sentence does not make sense.

Many officials said they had hoped the harassment would wane over time after the 2020 results were confirmed. But the attacks have persisted, fueled in many cases by right-wing media figures and groups that continue without evidence to cast election officials as complicit in a vast conspiracy by China, Democratic officials and voting equipment manufacturers to rob Trump of a second presidential term.

Again, they are not saying “Democrats claim these threats are caused by theories,” they are declaring it as fact. This is not something would have been considered normal news reporting a couple years ago.

In April, local election officials in Arizona participated in a drill simulating violence at a polling site in which several people were killed, according to an April 26 email from Lisa Marra, the president of the Election Officials of Arizona, which represents election administrators from the state’s 15 counties. The drill aimed to help officials prepare for Election Day violence, and left participants “understandably, disturbed” said the email to more than a dozen local election directors.

In a statement, Marra said: “This is just one other tool we can use to ensure election safety for all.”

Oh, so we’re doing drills to simulate violence at the polls, huh?

That’s interesting. Very interesting.

The article closes by blaming freedom of speech.

Misinformation on right-wing websites and social media fueled much of the hostility towards election staff, according to the internal messages among Maricopa officials.

The media hates the idea that anyone other than them is allowed to talk. They want one singular narrative, where the boundaries of what is allowed to be discussed are clearly delineated by “officials” in the media and government.

These insidious demands to silence everyone who disagrees with them are creeping into every discussion. It is hard to think of a single news topic that does not now involve media demands to shut down free speech.