Justice Department to take a harder look at harassment of election officials

By Tom Baxter, This article originally appeared in SaportaReport

In most stories last week, the news that the U.S. Justice Department is forming a task force to investigate and prosecute violent threats and intimidation of election officials and poll workers was played several paragraphs below the news that the feds were challenging Georgia’s voter law.

United States v. Georgia, the voter law challenge, is going to be one of those big, complicated cases that will take years, and reams of digital commentary, to sort out. It’s “the first of many steps,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said, which the Biden administration intends to use to challenge changes made by Republican legislatures after last year’s presidential election. It will make news slowly for a long time.

Don’t discount the potential for the task force to make plenty of news in the meantime. Recently the Reuters news service reported on what it said was a “particularly severe” wave of threats and intimidation against officials in Georgia since the election. The story expanded on previous reports of threatening messages and calls to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and his family, along with more reporting on the ongoing intimidation of local election workers. It gives us a broader look at just how much harassment election officials, not just the headline names but poll workers just doing their jobs, have had to endure.

This column first appeared on SaportaReport. Click to continue reading

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