Charles Pierce: Arizona Is Sticking Election Workers In 'Encampments' For Their Own Protection Now [View all]

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a60294412/maricopa-election-violence-voting-tabulation-center/

No paywall link
https://archive.li/5aov4

I don't mean to sound rude or, worse, panicky, but I think it's time to call in United Nations election monitors. We pretty clearly have degenerated to a state in which we can't be trusted to run our own elections. There's no shame in this game. After all, what's good enough for the Sudanese should be good enough for us. Besides, left on our own, we're at the point where election workers have to be put in "encampments" to protect them from bodily harm. That's some third-world action, and it's happening right now in Arizona. From Talking Points Memo:

Maricopa County has been a hotbed of election conspiracy theories and violence against election workers since the 2020 election. In both 2020 and 2022, Donald Trump and his allies, including Lake, spread false claims about signature verification mismatches, voter tabulators, and voting machines in Maricopa County. And as recently as this month, Lake, along with former Secretary of State candidate and election denier Mark Finchem, filed a petition to the Supreme Court seeking to outlaw electronic voting in the state. The conspiracy theories and relentless belief by some MAGA supporters that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump has led to a barrage of violent death threats aimed at Arizona election officials.

As you might imagine, the Maricopa County tabulation center is seen as ground zero for potential election-related violence prompted by the flood of disinformation that is expected to be even worse than it was in 2020. In response, the county has turned the tabulation center into a modern, high-security facility.

The center, with its heightened security measures, now resembles, in Gates’s words, “an encampment.” After experiencing a “Lollapalooza for the Alt-right” when Fox News called Maricopa County for President Biden in 2020, Gates stressed that the center now has permanent fencing, a badge requirement to even enter the parking lot as well as additional badges to enter the building, metal detectors upon entering the building, and netting on the temporary fencing in the parking lot so that voters cannot take pictures of election workers or their license plates. “It’s sad, but it’s what we have to do,” Gates added. “This is the hill that must be protected.”

Security measures look different at polling places, however, as election administrators have to find a balance between security and not unintentionally creating an environment where voters feel intimidated. In Maricopa, there will be a sizable presence of undercover law enforcement, in order to avoid concerns about creating any sort of “militarized feeling,” Gates said. “We felt that it’s very important that there not be a show of force at the vote centers,” he said, “because unfortunately, that could lead some to being discouraged to vote.” In 2020, Skinner noted, the tabulation center was a more vulnerable location because at the time it lacked fencing like it has now.

Let us be clear. These precautions are entirely due to the violent, anti-democratic forces loyal to the former president* that he has unleashed throughout the eight years of his active political career. Granted, the Republican sweet-tooth for lying about elections goes back at least as far as the days when the young William Rehnquist was bum-rushing Hispanic voters in Arizona in 1964 on behalf of Barry Goldwater. And the precedent for violently disrupting vote tabulation was pretty well set in Dade County in Florida 23 years ago. But the former president* found a deeper reservoir of flammable rage beneath the precedents and threw in a match. Now, in our politics, we have the equivalent of the Darvaza Gas Crater that's been aflame for over 50 years in Turkmenistan. The precautions being taken by Maricopa County are perfectly understandable given the state of play. More's the pity.

*the end*