Election officials prepare for threats of panic buttons and bulletproof glass

MARIETTA, Ga. (AP) — The elections director in Cobb County, an Atlanta suburb where the vote is hotly contested in this year’s presidential race, recently hosted a five-hour training session. The focus wasn’t just on the basics of running this year’s election. Instead, it brought together election staff and law enforcement to devise strategies to keep workers safe and the process of voting and counting ballots secure.

The additional security measures the office is taking this year include a deputy sheriff at the polls and panic buttons that allow poll workers to contact a local 911 dispatcher.

Cobb County Elections Director Tate Fall said she was motivated to take action after hearing one of her poll workers describe being confronted by an agitated voter during the March presidential election who the worker said was carrying a weapon. The situation ended peacefully, but the poll worker was shaken.

“That really made it for me — that it’s so easy for something to go wrong in life, period, let alone in the Georgia environment and elections,” Fall said. “I just can’t let anyone get hurt on my conscience.”

Across the country, local election directors are beefing up security ahead of Election Day on Nov. 5 to keep their workers and polling places safe while ensuring that ballots and voting procedures are not tampered with. Their concerns aren’t just theoretical. Election offices and those who run them have been the targets of intimidation and even death threats since the 2020 presidential election, largely from people acting on former President Donald Trump’s lies that the election was stolen from him through widespread fraud or rigged voting machines.

The focus on security comes as the threat of political violence grows. Trump was the target of a possible assassination attempt last weekend, just nine weeks after another threat on his life. Federal agents fatally shot a Trump supporter who threatened to kill President Joe Biden last year, and the husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was seriously injured in a hammer attack by a man pushing right-wing conspiracy theories.

In the past year alone, a window of the Cuyahoga County, Ohio, election office was shot at, and several election offices in five states received letters containing a white powder that in some cases tested positive for the powerful opioid fentanyl. False 911 calls were also placed to the homes of top election officials in Georgia, Maine, Michigan and Missouri in a potentially dangerous situation known as “swatting.”

“This is one of those things that I have to say, it’s just insane, it’s outrageous to me — the election threats against workers of both parties and their families, the bullying, the intimidation,” Jen Easterly, director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency, said at a recent agency-sponsored online event. “These people aren’t doing it for the money. They’re not doing it for the glory. They’re doing it because they believe it’s the right thing to do to defend our democracy.”

Her agency has conducted more than 1,000 voluntary physical security assessments of election offices since the beginning of 2023. Election officials have used that assistance to identify gaps and ask their local governments for money to make improvements.

They were also helped by a 2022 U.S. Election Assistance Commission ruling that allowed a certain portion of federal funding to be spent on security measures such as badge readers, cameras and protective fencing.

Los Angeles County in California and Durham County in North Carolina are getting new offices with significant security upgrades for this year’s elections. They include bulletproof glass, security cameras and badge-only doors. Election workers across the state are also getting new procedures for processing mail, including kits containing Narcan, the nasal spray used to treat accidental overdoses.

A central feature of the new Durham County office will be a mail processing room with a separate exhaust system to contain potentially hazardous materials sent through the mail.

“We have numerous reasons why this investment was critical,” said Derek Bowens, the county’s elections director, pointing to threats against election officials in Michigan and Arizona and suspicious letters sent to offices in Oregon, Washington, California and Georgia.

Bowens and others who have worked in elections for years said their jobs have changed significantly. Threats and intimidation are among the reasons why some election officials across the country have left. In some places, election workers are trained in de-escalation techniques and how to respond to an active shooter.

“Security to this extent was not on the list before. It is now,” said Cari-Ann Burgess, the chief elections officer in Washoe County, Nevada. “We have exercises that we go through, we have contingency plans that we have prepared. We are being much more cautious now than ever before.”

In Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, about a four-hour drive from where Trump was wounded in an assassination attempt at a campaign rally in July, election officials estimate they are now spending about 40% of their time on security and working with local law enforcement and emergency managers on election plans. That includes regular training to prepare for anything that could disrupt voting or ballot counting.

“It’s very volatile and Luzerne County is mirroring what’s happening across the country,” said County Manager Romilda Crocamo, who oversees the elections office staff. “It seems like people are very emotional and sometimes that emotion escalates.”

Crocamo is considering purchasing panic buttons for poll workers who will be at about 130 polling places across the county on Election Day. Pennsylvania law prohibits law enforcement from being at polling places, but Crocamo and her team are talking to local officials about having emergency responders at the locations with radios in case something happens.

Many local officials said they have increased law enforcement presence at election offices, including on Election Night when poll workers bring in ballots and other materials from polling places. Additional law enforcement is also planned in the weeks following Election Day, during vote counting and certification of results.

In Los Angeles, police canine teams will help scan incoming mail ballots for suspicious substances. It’s part of a revamped approach that includes a new $29 million elections office that consolidates operations that were previously scattered across the county.

Dean Logan, who oversees elections for Los Angeles County, said security remains a top priority. He pointed to social media posts suggesting how ballot boxes could be damaged and mail-in voting impeded. He said the white powder letters were designed to disrupt election operations, and that it is the responsibility of election officials to ensure that does not happen.

The office will have 24-hour security and additional county sheriff’s personnel will be present for the November elections.

“It’s important to me that we can tell voters that they don’t have to worry about the security of their ballots,” he said. “We’ve taken steps to keep them safe.”

Election officials say security is a balancing act: ensuring safety, making sure polling places are welcoming spaces for voters, and providing adequate access to election offices so the public can trust the process.

Four years ago, a large crowd of Trump supporters in Michigan created a tense and chaotic atmosphere as they gathered outside the Detroit polls the day after the election. They chanted “Stop the count!” as they banged on windows, demanding to be let in.

Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey said her office is much better prepared this time around, with more cameras, armed security and bulletproof glass. Observers are now checked in and screened by security outside a large room used for counting ballots at the city’s convention center.

“My biggest concern was protecting the staff and the process,” Winfrey said. “And then our building — it may look the same, but it’s not the same.”