Georgia election worker sounds alarm on Trump's new intimidation scheme

07 June

Donald Trump at the 2024 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland on February 24, 2024 (Jonah Elkowitz/Shutterstock.com)

President Donald Trump is attempting to compromise future elections by targeting election workers to gaslight America about his 2020 defeat, according to a Georgia election worker.

“We are responding to ‘Fulton seeks to block federal subpoena targeting 2020 election workers, May 5,’” wrote Election Protectors United of Georgia’s Jon C. Greaves in an editorial for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that was published on Sunday. “As registered voters from Fulton County and beyond, we deeply value the selfless staff and volunteers who facilitate free and fair elections here and across the state.”

Greaves continued, “The effort by the Department of Justice to obtain personal information for these workers and volunteers is shameful. The DOJ should not be involved in the intimidation of poll workers and the dissemination of disinformation. Propagating the lie that there was fraud in the 2020 elections further weaponizes the DOJ against ordinary citizens.”

Greaves added, “We recall the slander of poll workers by former New York Mayor and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani to further the 2020 election lies. It was wrong when Giuliani did it then, and it is wrong for the DOJ to misuse the legal process now to spread disinformation and endanger the lives of citizens. We call on the DOJ to withdraw its subpoena immediately.”

Speaking to AlterNet last week, a pair of election security experts echoed Greaves’ concerns that Trump’s supposed election integrity efforts are actually part of a plan to undermine democracy overall.

“I think there are two things to consider,” Pooja Chaudhuri, Senior Counsel/Deputy Legal Director at Democracy Defenders Fund who specializes in voting rights as well as election law litigation and advocacy, told AlterNet. “One is that the election is made up of voters, and so the outcome depends on people turning out to the polls and voting. The problem is ... the chilling effect on voters.”

Chaudhuri continued, “When voters hear that ICE may be deployed to the polls, that mail-in voting rules are changing close to the election, a lot of voters might say, ‘I'm just not going to go out and vote.’ That could happen in many different ways. There are vulnerable communities — people may come from mixed-status families — they're US citizens, but they might decide, "I'm not going to vote." So one aspect is the chilling effect on voters that all of these actions would have.” Chaudhuri also expressed alarm that both gerrymandering and the FBI’s seizure of Fulton County, GA election information also could keep voters away from the polls.

“We're going to see consequences in terms of voters saying, ‘I don't want the FBI to get my personal ballot in the future,’” Chaudhuri observed. “So, to sum up, I do agree that putting it all together, it does paint an ominous picture.”

Dan Vicuña, Senior Policy Director for Voting and Fair Representation at Common Cause, also expressed alarm about Trump’s election actions.

“What they all add up to is a desire to avoid any accountability to the voters in the midterm elections — to ensure, to preordain the outcome of a midterm that he thinks is going to go badly for him,” Vicuña told AlterNet. “We know, from the Big Lie of the 2020 election to spurring on a violent revolt to overthrow a free and fair election, that he has no respect for democratic norms, for the voice of the people. This is entirely about his own power and his own ego. He will even invest in protecting that ego and protecting his power at the expense of the needs of the public. People are suffering with high gas prices and affordability issues, and he does not care. All that matters is protecting his power, and he has no interest in whether he does that through democratic means.”

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