At the beginning of September, the electoral board of a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia, was holding a routine meeting ahead of the American presidential election when a cry rang out from the audience: “Heil Hitler!” “.
Shortly before, according to a video, another spectator accused a Jewish council member of being a masked communist because she did not stand during the pledge of allegiance to the United States flag.
“We are in an ultrapartisan environment, I don’t believe that this existed before 2020,” said Tori Silas, president of the electoral board of Cobb County, a suburb northwest of Atlanta, contacted by telephone by AFP.
These episodes of tension are not uncommon, particularly in swing states like Georgia, which are likely to make the election.
“We receive daily threats, whether they are voice messages, emails, posts on networks or in person,” summarized on CBS Jocelyn Benson, electoral manager in Michigan, another key state. “And it’s intensifying.”
The US Postal Service explained to AFP that it was investigating, alongside the FBI, “suspicious letters addressed to election officials in several states”, some of which contained an undetermined substance.
Lisa Deeley, a Democratic election board member from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, regrets that “wild accusations of widespread fraud and abuse” continue to circulate, repeating the “modus operandi” of a “certain candidate” in 2020, a reference to Republican Donald Trump.
Security
When he lost the presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden four years ago, the outgoing man falsely claimed fraud and targeted electoral officials by name on the networks.
In his race to reconquer the White House against Democratic Vice-President Kamala Harris, Donald Trump continues to claim that the previous election was “stolen” from him.
“Bad, bad things happened (in 2020), we are not going to allow that to happen again,” said the 78-year-old candidate recently.
The electoral councils therefore take security measures in addition to ensuring their traditional missions, ensuring that the vote is efficient and honest.
In Georgia, Tori Silas explains that she implements “best security practices”. The teams will be equipped with walkie-talkies directly linked to the emergency services and additional police officers will be deployed.
In Maricopa County, Arizona, authorities have invested in “metal detectors, barriers and cameras,” Republican official Bill Gates said on CBS. “I wish I didn’t have to do all that. »
The fear is that, like in 2020, the vote will be so close that it will take a long time to declare a winner.
Delays
“The time between the close of polls on election night and the moment the result is known is the most conducive to misinformation,” said Seth Bluestein, a Republican member of the Philadelphia election board.
He remembers that four years ago the situation was particularly difficult.
New voters had voted by mail due to changes in voting rules and COVID, which created enormous pressure. “It took us four days of continuous work to count enough ballots for the race to be decided,” he told AFP.
Several elections have taken place since then, a new ballot processing center has been set up and Mr. Bluestein says he is “cautiously optimistic” about the city’s preparedness.
State legislatures, which are divided along partisan lines, have, however, failed to address a major problem: Counting hundreds of thousands of mail-in votes cannot begin until Election Day.
If the outcome of the race were to be determined by Pennsylvania, a possibility according to analysts, the proclamation of the winner could be delayed by several days.
“Rather than solving the problem, it was political politics that played a role,” regrets Ms. Deeley.
But election officials have no choice “but to continue their crusade against misinformation through Election Day and beyond,” she said. And to assure: “We know what we have to do. Our elections are secure and fair.”