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State election workers say threats are escalating ahead of 2024 vote: “A heightened state of anxiety”
With less than two months to go until Election Day, and with former President Donald Trump continuing to repeat baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen, the issue of election integrity will likely remain at the forefront of many voters’ minds.
Election officials from seven battleground states convened in Atlanta last week to compare notes and prepare for Election Day. Four of them — one Democrat and three Republicans — spoke with CBS News about the stress and anxiety of their jobs, and also their conviction that elections are conducted freely and fairly.
Asked what emotion this year’s election fills him with, Republican Gabriel Sterling, chief operating officer for Georgia’s office of secretary of state, said, “I feel like it should be joy, but there’s some angst.”
“The biggest thing I worry about is the possibility of violence by people who lose,” he said.
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, said, “We’re daily receiving threats, whether it’s through voicemails, emails, social media or in person.”
Benson said she personally is receiving threats, “and it’s escalating.”
“They’re all rooted in lies and misinformation, which is always disappointing and sad, but at the same time, it’s real,” she said.
Republican Bill Gates, a member of the Board of Supervisors for Arizona’s Maricopa County, has spoken openly about his need for therapy in the face of hostility driven by election denialism.
“This has unfortunately become a way of life, and we’ve invested as a board in metal detectors, in fencing, in cameras,” he said. “I wish we didn’t have to do this, but we do.”
Gates said that despite the threats, he’s “gone and gotten the support that I need and I’m feeling great.”
In Georgia, poll supervisors are given a direct line to report trouble. It’s a text tool that will “notify the state election’s office, the county election’s office and the local sheriff’s office if there’s an issue,” Sterling said, noting the system is in place for a range of problems that could crop up.
“Is it somebody yelling at people in the parking lot or is it somebody with a gun?” he said.
When asked about the concern some voters have about the possibility of undocumented immigrants voting, Benson said, “I understand the fear, but it’s an unfounded fear.”
Gates agreed, calling the specter of widespread voting from undocumented immigrants “a bogeyman.”
“It’s not happening,” he said. “This is not something that people should be concerned about.”
Philadelphia City Commissioner Seth Bluestein, a Republican, said, “We’re just not seeing it in any real numbers.”
Bluestein said that if he could dispel one piece of election misinformation it would be, “that there are magical ballot drops in the middle of the night.”
“That window of time from when the polls close until the networks are able to call the race is where that window of misinformation can spread,” he said.
Gates said he wishes he could do away with “the conspiracy theory that our tabulation machines are connected to the internet. They’re not.”
After the 2020 election, Sterling chastised fellow Republicans for inciting unrest with election denying rhetoric.
“For 200 years, the loser accepting the outcome and coming back to fight again in two to four years was the way the system worked, and we all accepted it,” Sterling said. “We have to get back to that being the normal way of dealing with elections.”
Benson lamented, “We’ve now endured four years of that same rhetoric. And that’s why I think all of us do feel a little bit of a heightened state of anxiety going to this cycle that it’s even more possible than it was in those darkest days of 2020 that we could see that rhetoric transform into violent acts in the weeks ahead. And we all have to brace ourselves for that.”
Gates said that he continues to be “disappointed by many people in the Republican Party — elected officials who continue to be silent in the face of these threats. We cannot normalize threats of violence against anyone, but particularly those people who are literally running our democracy.”
TRENTON, N.J. — Democratic Newark City Council President LaMonica McIver has defeated Republican small businessman Carmen Bucco in a contest in New Jersey’s 10th Congressional District that opened up because of the death of Rep. Donald Payne Jr. in April.
McIver will serve out the remainder of Payne’s term, which ends in January. She and Bucco will face a rematch on the November ballot for the full term.
McIver said in a statement Wednesday that she stands on the “shoulders of giants,” naming Payne as chief among them.
She cast ahead to the November election, saying the right to make reproductive health choices was on the ballot as well as whether the economy should benefit the wealthy or “hard working Americans.”
“I will fight because the purpose of politics and the purpose of our vote is to give the people of our communities and our nation a bold voice,” she said.
Bucco congratulated McIver on the victory in a statement but said he’s looking forward to the rematch in November.
“I am not going anywhere,” he said in an email. “We still have a second chance to make district 10 great again!”
Who are LaMonica McIver and Carmen Bucco?
McIver emerged as the Democratic candidate in a crowded field in the July special election. A member of the city council of New Jersey’s biggest city since 2018, she also worked for Montclair Public Schools as a personnel director and plans to focus on affordability, infrastructure, abortion rights and “protecting our democracy,” she told The Associated Press earlier this summer.
Bucco describes himself on his campaign website as a small-business owner influenced by his upbringing in the foster system. He lists support for law enforcement and ending corruption as top issues.
The 10th District lies in a heavily Democratic and majority-Black region of northern New Jersey. Republicans are outnumbered by more than 6 to 1.
It’s been a volatile year for Democrats in New Jersey, where the party dominates state government and the congressional delegation.
Among the developments were the conviction on federal bribery charges of U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, who has denied the charges, and the demise of the so-called county party line — a system in which local political leaders give their preferred candidates favorable position on the primary ballot.
Democratic Rep. Andy Kim, who’s running for Menendez’s seat, and other Democrats brought a federal lawsuit challenging the practice as part of his campaign to oust Menendez, who has resigned since his conviction.
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Sean “Diddy” Combs at same Brooklyn detention center that held R. Kelly, Sam Bankman-Fried, other high-profile inmates
A second judge refused to grant bail to Sean “Diddy” Combs on Wednesday and he could remain in federal custody at a Brooklyn detention center until his trial for sex trafficking charges. Combs joins other high-profile inmates, such as singer R. Kelly, fallen cryptocurrency mogul Sam Bankman-Fried, rapper Ja Rule —even Al Sharpton served a brief stint— who were held at the same federal detention center.
Notorious for its horrible conditions —inmates won a $10 million class action settlement after enduring frigid conditions during an 8-day blackout in 2019— the waterfront industrial complex, MDC Brooklyn, houses 1,200 inmates.
JOHANNES EISELE/AFP via Getty Images
Violence and corruption have long plagued the facility; U.S. District Judge Gary R. Brown of the Eastern District of New York wrote the detention center had “dangerous, barbaric conditions” in a recent sentencing opinion. Two inmates were stabbed to death in recent months and several correction officers have been convicted for smuggling contraband and accepting bribes.
Combs joins a list of high-profile personalities that have landed at the MDC Brooklyn, partly because the city’s other federal detention center, MDC New York, closed in 2021, also due to horrible conditions. The disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide in his cell there in 2019. “Numerous and serious” instances of misconduct among corrections staff gave Epstein the opportunity to kill himself, a subsequent federal watchdog investigation found.
Kelly sued the federal detention center in 2022 for wrongly putting him on suicide watch after his sentencing. Kelly sought $100 million because he said the detention center knew he wasn’t suicidal after he was convicted in 2021 for racketeering and violating the Mann Act, which bars transporting people across state lines for prostitution.
Yuki Iwamura/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Former crypto billionaire Bankman-Fried survived on bread, water and sometimes peanut butter when he was in the MDC Brooklyn, his attorney said, because the detention center continued to serve him a “flesh diet” despite requests for vegan dishes.
Ja Rule stayed at the MDC Brooklyn for a brief time before being released after serving most of his two-year sentence for illegal gun possession. Most of his prison time was spent in a state prison in New York.
Sharpton served a 90-day sentence in 2001 and went on a hunger strike for protesting the U.S. Navy bombing of the island of Vieques, in Puerto Rico.
Combs was taken into custody on Monday and according to an indictment unsealed Tuesday he was charged with sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution.
His attorney Marc Agnifilo told CBS News, “It’s impossible to prepare for a trial from where he is,” after a first federal judge denied Combs bail on Tuesday.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Robyn Tarnofsky agreed with prosecutors who argued the hip-hop mogul, who is accused of using his business empire as a criminal enterprise to conceal his alleged abuse of women, is a flight risk and poses an ongoing threat to the safety of the community.
Agnifilo said the part of the detention center where Combs is being held is “a very difficult place to be.”
contributed to this report.
