Thursday, June 1, 2023 | 2 a.m.
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Thousands of election workers in Nevada, who are the unsung heroes of democracy in the Silver State, can rest a little easier today knowing that their state government is united in protecting them. On Tuesday, Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo and Democratic Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar shared a stage in Carson City as Lombardo signed Senate Bill 406 into law.
The bill makes it a felony to harass or intimidate election workers for the purpose of interfering with an election or retaliate against election workers for their role in the democratic process. It also protects workers from having their personal and private contact information, or that of their family members, disseminated for the purpose of intimidation or harassment.
Individuals who violate the law will face up to four years in prison.
Election officials have traditionally received respect and appreciation for putting in long hours, often for relatively low wages, to ensure every citizen has the opportunity to vote and that every vote is counted. They are our friends, family members and neighbors who toil in relative obscurity to turn the first and most essential gears of democracy.
Yet recently, they’ve become the victims of partisan election deniers who are themselves deeply undemocratic. With the rise in election-disinformation and conspiracy theories espoused by Donald Trump in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections and the 2018 midterms, election workers and their families have become the targets of increasingly common intimidation, harassment and threats.
The result is nothing less than terrifying. Not only are innocent and hard-working people and their families being targeted without cause, but the institutions of free and fair elections are now at risk.
By the time Nevadans came to the polls to vote in the 2022 midterms, more than half of the top elections officials in Nevada’s 17 counties had stepped down. A similar exodus was seen among county election staff, short-term poll workers and even in the secretary of state’s office.
A Boston Globe analysis of six swing states — Arizona, Georgia, Massachusetts, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — found a similarly disturbing pattern in those states, with a roughly 30% increase in election-official resignation or retirement since the conclusion of the 2020 election cycle.
Hard-working people, who want little more than to play their part in the United States’ great tradition of democratic self-determination, are being driven out by violent authoritarian conspiracy theorists with no respect for this country or its people.
Without solutions to the growing threat of anti-democratic intimidation, harassment and threats, the U.S. faces a disturbing future in which understaffed polling places are populated by undertrained and underexperienced workers. The lack of workers, training and experience will increase our exposure to risks of fraud and abuse while creating long lines at the polls and even longer waiting periods before receiving election results.
Moreover, the problem of election denialism and subsequent intimidation is not one that can be solved by a single person, entity or jurisdiction. U.S. elections are decentralized by design, which means that restoring confidence in the democratic process requires a broad-based coalition of election defenders who believe in democracy and the rights of all Americans to vote.
Aguilar, Nevada’s secretary of state, stepped up to that challenge and campaigned on a promise to protect election workers and build the coalition necessary to restore trust in the electoral process. His campaign and subsequent actions stand in sharp contrast to his Republican opponent, Jim Marchant, who still actively peddles in election-related conspiracy theory.
Marchant recently announced that he is running for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Jacky Rosen. Thanks to the passage of SB 406 and Lombardo’s signing the bill into law, Marchant will have to win the contest without the support of extremists using harassment and intimidation to threaten election workers and the electoral process.
We applaud Aguilar for making good on his promise, doing the hard work of coalition building and ushering the bill across the finish line. We also offer our gratitude to Lombardo and the Nevada Legislature for their support of this long-overdue bill.
But more than any of them, we hope all Nevadans will join us in offering appreciation and support to our election workers, without whom the very first and most basic step of a free and fair democracy would not be possible.
