‘We don’t need vigilantes’: How disinformation is harming poll workers

As the November election nears, election officials and experts in Pennsylvania are sounding the alarm about the effects of right-wing disinformation on poll workers.

For the past four years, former President Donald Trump and his Republican allies have falsely claimed that Trump won the 2020 election. While those lies took hold with members of the Republican base, they also wrongly accused election officials in the commonwealth and across the country of preventing Trump from winning the election. 

“The disinformation, the misinformation, is one of the biggest hurdles for all of us, those that administer elections and all the way down to the voter,” said Philadelphia City Commissioner Lisa Deeley, a Democratic member of the three-person bipartisan board in charge of the city’s elections.

Nationwide, 30% of local election officials reported being abused, harassed or threatened, and nearly three in four said threats against election workers have increased in recent years, according to an April 2023 report from the Brennan Center for Justice.

Those interviewed for this story were careful to point out that poll workers themselves have largely not been threatened. Rather, it is full-time election administrators, including Deeley and former Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, who have been the targets of the kinds of threats that have prompted a nationwide exodus of election officials from their jobs.

Boockvar, who served as Pennsylvania’s secretary of state from 2019 to 2021, had to keep her location secret and wasn’t able to travel alone following the 2020 election because of death threats. Deeley also received threats after Trump made baseless claims of fraud against Philadelphia election workers.

While poll workers haven’t faced the same level of intimidation as their administrative counterparts, Deeley emphasized that they aren’t immune to the disinformation war that Trump and other right-wing officials have continued to wage. She’s not concerned that there will be violence against Philadelphia’s poll workers on Election Day, but she is worried that disinformation is keeping people from signing up to do the work.

“Our poll workers, they’re not in a bubble,” Deeley said. “They hear everything else that everybody’s saying. So they have fear based on a constant stream of mis- and disinformation, and based on some real-life events that have happened in other places around the country regarding poll workers.”

Election experts raised concerns over the announcement by Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee in April of plans to send thousands of poll watchers and other “legal experts” to polling locations across the country, including in Pennsylvania, for the Nov. 5 election.

“It’s a tricky issue because I very, very much believe in transparency, and I believe very much that it’s important for people of all parties, and candidates, for people to be able to observe the processes,” Boockvar said. “But it’s also important to have controls on that so that people don’t disrupt operations, don’t interfere with voting, don’t harass or threaten or intimidate voters or election officials.”

Boockvar added that Pennsylvania has strong laws meant to protect poll workers. Poll watchers, for example, must be from the county in which they are observing.

The announcement from the Trump campaign and RNC officials came as they continue to promote lies about the 2020 election and work to undermine public trust in the elections process. Trump has refused to say whether he’ll accept the 2024 election results, and his current campaign playbook is reminiscent of 2020: accuse those campaigning against him of fraud.

Susan Gobreski, the vice president of policy at the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania, said it’s a positive that people want to get involved with elections, but it’s important for those who do to be respectful and law-abiding.

“We don’t need vigilantes; we need responsible citizens,” said Gobreski, who in 2021 helped to launch the Pennsylvania league’s program to recruit and retain poll workers in the commonwealth. “So, you know, fine, monitor a polling place, but you can’t accuse somebody of not being an eligible voter because of the color of their skin or the language that they speak.”

Poll work remains safe, experts emphasized.

A Brennan Center report from May 2024 stated that 92% of the country’s election administrators have taken steps to increase safety and security for voters, poll workers and other election officials following the 2020 election. 

Marta Hanson, the national program manager for Power the Polls, a nonpartisan group that’s leading efforts to recruit poll workers across the country, noted that of the poll workers her group surveyed nationwide following the 2022 election, 95% said they had a positive experience and wanted to serve again.

“We absolutely do not want to undercut or devalue the very real threats that these election administrators are facing,” Hanson said. “The truth that we also have to hold at the same time is that when we’re recruiting people to be poll workers, the high likelihood is that they will have a positive experience, and they will not face threats and harassment.”