Pennsylvania officials who faced death threats in 2020 prepare for the 2024 election

In 2020, it was Kathy Boockvar’s 21-year-old daughter who first alerted her: An image of the Pennsylvania secretary of state’s face in crosshairs was making its way across right-wing social media.  

This wasn’t the first time she’d face a threat in the days following the 2020 election, and it would be far from the last. As President Donald Trump falsely claimed he had won the election nationally and in Pennsylvania, his followers began to target those they accused of keeping their leader from claiming victory: election officials.

For Boockvar, who served as the commonwealth’s secretary of state from 2019 to 2021, that meant a flood of threats against her and her family. In the days following an election marred by right-wing conspiracy theories fueled by Trump and his supporters, Boockvar always had a to-go bag packed in case she needed to run for safety. 

That is exactly what she did when her daughter called her in the early morning hours about the photo that had made its way from more fringe right-wing sites like Parler to mainstream right-wing accounts on Twitter and other social media. To-go bag in tow, Boockvar quickly left her Bucks County home and stayed in undisclosed locations for a little more than a week.

“Basically, for about I would say a month and a half or so, I did not stay alone,” said Boockvar, who former Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, appointed to be secretary of state in 2019. “It was recommended that I cover my head and wear hats and scarves. I was scared to walk the dog. I was scared to just be outside, doing normal things that we do in our lives.”

Four years later, Boockvar no longer fears for her life — but she’s deeply worried that there is more election disinformation, not less, as the country heads into the final months before the Nov. 5 election.

As state and federal election officials and others work to create safer elections for election workers and voters alike, Trump and his right-wing allies continue to push blatant falsehoods about 2020. The former president’s lies about election integrity in Pennsylvania and the entire country have been repeatedly debunked, but that hasn’t stopped him from endlessly spreading his bogus claims. Those lies fuel continued animosity toward election workers and are prompting them to leave their positions in the commonwealth and across the country, election officials and political experts say.

An April 2024 report from the Center for Bipartisan Policy found that Pennsylvania’s turnover rate for local election officials of 56.7% from 2018 to 2022 was one of the country’s highest. The election workers that remain in their positions nationwide reported facing high levels of harassment and feeling immense fear for their safety.

A Brennan Center for Justice survey in 2023 reported that three in four local election officials feel that threats against election workers have increased in recent years, and 30% said they have personally been abused, harassed or threatened because of their job. The same survey reported that 21% of local election officials either started working in their position after the 2020 election or said they are very or somewhat unlikely to stay in their position for the 2024 election.

“I think what’s most infuriating about it is that election officials are literally the heroes of our democracy, without whom every one of us could not exercise our fundamental right to vote,” said Boockvar, who is now the president of Athena Strategies, a Pennsylvania-based consulting firm focused on the security of elections and democracy. 

Not only do attacks against election workers result in their leaving; they could also change the country’s entire electoral landscape, Philadelphia City Commissioner Lisa Deeley said. Deeley, a Democratic member of the three-person bipartisan board in charge of the city’s elections, faced an threats from Trump supporters after Trump in 2020 made baseless claims of fraud on the part  of election workers in Philadelphia.

“I used to have a job where I was pretty much like a wedding planner,” Deeley said. “Election Day would come, we would make sure all the polls were open, the lights were on, the bells and whistles were working, and we’d count the votes at the end, and everybody would go about their business. 

“But now, if I go into a place, and this happens quite frequently, people know who you are. There’s no doubt somebody’s going to whisper something like, Oh yeah, that’s the girl that stole the votes, or, She can’t count, whatever. Some derogatory thing’s frequently being blurted out around you, which makes you uncomfortable,” Deeley said. 

Those threats and interactions, she explained, leave her with a feeling of anxiety that she never had before the 2020 election.

“And it’s a shame because I really worry about the next generation of election administration,” Deeley said. “Who are they going to be like? Because I grew up in this, and it’s changed me, so I can’t imagine what it’s going to do to the next generation of election administrators.

“Will people want to do this job?” Deeley asked. “And what kind of people will we get, and how long will they stay? It’s going to affect elections for decades and decades, for as far as I can see, unless we do something drastic to turn the tide so that people stop with throwing out the fraud thing first, or throwing out the fake information first.”

Fighting this disinformation can seem daunting, Boockvar said, but it’s a battle that any concerned citizen can wage. If someone notices disinformation being spread by elected officials, family members, friends, or anyone else, it’s crucial that they speak up. 

“Look, I think there’s many more of us who believe that this is wrong, that this is not who we are as Americans, and understand that election officials are the guardians of our democracy, not bad people who should be threatened,” Boockvar said. “But the problem is, though there’s many more of us, we tend to be quieter than those who are trying to tear down our democracy. And so we need to be louder; we need to be speaking up.”

These days have been dark and rife with disinformation and division, but the country is full of people working to change that, Boockvar said, and pointed to the Committee for Safe and Secure Elections. The committee was established in 2022 by members of a number of pro-democracy organizations, including the Brennan Center for Justice and the Elections Group, in response to threats against election officials.

Boockvar, who sits on the committee, noted that members have done trainings for law enforcement and election workers to help them strengthen their election security protocols. Led by Boockvar, committee members have also created guides to inform election officials, law enforcement and voters about election law in every state. 

“There are a lot of good folks who are working on these issues now and trying to help America heal,” Boockvar said.