'We have to worry about physical violence': AZ elections chief preps for threats from MAGA

16 March 2024

With the exception of 2020, Arizona's electoral votes have gone to Republican presidential candidates in every election since 2000. Now, with the swing state seen as a must-win in 2024, its elections officials are having to prepare for the possibility of political violence from election deniers.

The Guardian reported that Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes — a veteran of the US Marine Corps who now travels with a bodyguard — has been busy training election workers across the Grand Canyon State for a range of possibilities from bad actors. This includes active shooter drills, fire drills and preparation in the event of a chemical spill at facilities where voting equipment is stored. Polling places are reportedly being stocked with "kits containing tourniquets to staunch bloodletting, hammers for breaking glass windows and door-blocking devices have been distributed to county election offices."

"It’s a sad state of affairs that in a civil society, in one of the most advanced civilizations that anybody could have imagined, we have to worry about physical violence," Fontes said. He told the publication that while "these are not things we would ever want to train anybody on," preparations for attacks on election workers must be taken seriously "given the environment."

"We will prepare as best we can for any contingencies," Fontes added. "And then we have no choice but to march forward, hopefully."

Election denialism is rampant among Arizona Republicans. The state is one of several swing states where GOP activists posed as "fake electors" in an effort to illegally overturn 2020 elections results in former President Donald Trump's favor. State lawmakers famously conducted a widely panned "audit" of votes in Maricopa County — the state's most populous and Democratic-leaning county — in an effort to unearth evidence of nonexistent mass voter fraud.

Maricopa County Board of Elections supervisor Bill Gates, who is a lifelong Republican, previously announced he would be leaving public office due to constant death threats from Trump supporters. After he posted a family photo on social media last Christmas, one commenter called for his daughter to be sexually assaulted.

"It’s my team that’s going after me," Gates told the Guardian. "Four of us supervisors are Republicans in Maricopa. We stood up for democracy, we stood up for elections that are safe and secure, and we’ve been called Rinos [Republicans in Name Only], traitors, Marxist communists on a daily basis."

"Democracy is teetering," he continued. "It is extremely difficult to win a Republican primary if you defend our election system. If that’s not teetering, I don’t know what is."

In deep-red Cochise County, two Republican election officials have cost local taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars in unsuccessful election denial fights in courts, and have since been indicted for refusing to certify election results. And Kari Lake, who is the likely Republican US Senate nominee in the state's upcoming US Senate election, has still not acknowledged her 2022 loss to Democrat Katie Hobbs in the Arizona gubernatorial election. Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes told the Guardian that "every election cycle we seem to face a test."

"I think we’re going to pass it, but it’s dangerous," she said.

Click here to read the Guardian's report in full.

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