Police and poll workers train for possible election threats

ATLANTA — When Deidre Holden received an email with a bomb threat and a volley of insults almost four years ago, she knew the dynamic of elections had changed. Voting season used to be busy, fun and mostly uneventful, says the election director for Paulding County northwest of Atlanta.

“But elections are a different world now,” she says. A world where survival training is part of the planning process.

The email arrived in her inbox a few days before the two highly charged January 2021 U.S. Senate runoff elections, but it didn’t scare her. “It made me angry that people were trying to hurt us and the electoral process,” says the 20-year election veteran as she glances through her window at the government building in the small town of Dallas.

The FBI investigated the threat, and the experience also prompted Holden to take action for the future. Like many poll managers across the country and especially in key battleground states like Georgia, Holden and her team partnered with law enforcement for joint training sessions.

“I want to be able to deal with whatever obstacle is thrown in our way,” she says.

Learning about possible threats

Several organizations across the country have made it their mission to help safeguard election workers, voters and the electoral process. One is the Committee for Safe and Secure Elections (CSSE). The national, nonpartisan organization offers classes for election workers and police officers to prepare for elections in a climate of violence.

“Our goal is to bring both groups together to learn about each other’s roles, practices and responsibilities,” says Chris Harvey, one of CSSE’s founders.

Harvey served as Georgia’s elections director from 2015 to 2021, a career that spanned some of the most volatile elections in state history.

A former street cop, homicide detective and DA’s investigator, Harvey got his own taste of the hate and violence that followed the 2020 elections. One day before the Senate runoff election that following January, Harvey learned that a picture of his face in a bullseye, his address and other personal data were posted on the darknet. An email advised him to say farewell to his family.

The death threat solidified Harvey’s decision to leave his position. He returned to his roots and now serves as deputy executive director for the Georgia Peace Officer Standards and Training Council (P.O.S.T), the state’s certification agency for law enforcement officers.

The Committee for Safe and Secure Elections has taught poll managers and police officers in about 30 states, including Arizona, Michigan and Georgia.

At a recent class in the coastal Georgia town of Brunswick, Harvey was joined by Blake Evans, the state’s new elections director and Harvey’s successor at the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office.

Thirty election officials, police officers and sheriff’s deputies gathered in the auditorium at the local public safety emergency building, where, after a brief introduction, they broke up into groups to game out scenarios ranging from mundane to dramatic.

For example, what would they do if a grouchy voter entered the polling place and refused to comply with the rules to turn their campaign shirt inside out? Or if a voter entered a polling place with a gun? (In Georgia, carrying a firearm within 150 feet of a polling location is a misdemeanor, even though Georgia is an open carry state.)

What would election workers do if an angry mob of non-credentialed poll watchers gathered outside the polling station yelling about voter fraud, and tried to gain access to the enclosed space within the polling area? When is the time to call for police backup?

“In most of the cases, the poll manager will approach the people and explain the rules, and most of the time, people will eventually comply,” explains Harvey.

Only when people create a disturbance that could interfere with the election process or harm voters and poll workers “it might be necessary to get law enforcement involved,” he says.

Voter intimidation worries

One question raised in almost every workshop is how to balance the need for voter and poll worker protection with the risk of voter intimidation. It’s a sensitive topic because the role of law enforcement during elections has a troubled history, especially in the South.

Voter intimidation, voter suppression and violence against Black people were prevalent from the end of post-Civil War Reconstruction through the Civil Rights era. In many cases, law enforcement actively participated in the injustices.

As election officials and law enforcement discuss how to protect polling places and poll workers in 2024, they “want to be very careful about replicating these painful images,” says Andra Gillespie, a political science professor at Emory University in Atlanta.

Armed police officers at polling locations may trigger traumatic memories, especially for older African Americans — and prevent some from casting their votes altogether.

Christopher Bruce, policy director for the ACLU of Georgia, thinks it’s important to clearly define the threat before sending police. Law enforcement should take a supportive role in securing polling locations, he says, “not take over a location.”

The training, he says, must “be sensitive to the racial dynamics and emphasize the need to build trust with marginalized communities.”

For Harvey, it’s a valid concern. Solutions may be different for every community, he says. One option could be to have plainclothes officers scattered around polling locations.

While it is illegal to deploy federal troops or armed federal law enforcement officers to any polling place, state and local laws about police at polling locations vary widely among the 50 states.

The key is for law enforcement and election officials to work together in a way that is “practical, intelligent and non-oppressive,” Harvey says. “It’s not our intention to turn a polling place into a militarized zone.”

Preparing for emergencies

The workshop also addresses other public safety emergencies like fires, bomb threats and suspicious substances.

It’s critical to build relationships ahead of time, says Harvey.

“You never want to get someone’s business card for the first time in the middle of a crisis. You don’t want to meet your counterpart at 7:30 am on election day and find out that there’s a gas main leak or a bomb threat,” he adds.

As the workshop closes, election workers and law enforcement officers mingle before heading to their offices and patrol cars.

Staff Sgt. Steve McKinney, a deputy with the Camden County Sheriff’s Office near Brunswick, has been in law enforcement for 16 years and has worked a fair number of elections.

“Before the workshop, I wasn’t really aware how hard the poll managers work and how stressful the job is,” he says. He’s committed to focusing even more on poll workers’ safety, “especially since the elections have gotten more heated.”

He also wants to brush up on his knowledge about the Georgia election code, “all the rights and laws, because it can get contentious sometimes.”

That’s why the Committee for Safe and Secure Elections hands out small paper booklets that fit in a police officer's uniform pocket. These booklets contain the key provisions of the Georgia Election Code.

For example, threatening or using violence to intimidate poll workers and voters is a felony. Also, it is the duty of a law enforcement officer to remove any obstacles at a voting location and maintain order at polling places.

In addition to offering workshops on election security, this summer Georgia became the first state to mandate a course in election law for all new police officers.

“Cops can typically work a traffic accident without ever consulting the law,” says Harvey, “because they do it all the time, and they know the code sections by heart.”

He doesn’t expect police officers to become experts in election law, he adds, “but we want them to know where to find it, and that there are resources they can use to get ready for some of the challenges.”

Not backing down to threats

Since the bomb threat in 2021, Deidre Holden, the Paulding County elections director, has dealt with many difficult voters, some just cranky, others aggressive.

She says there will be a uniformed sheriff’s deputy at every polling location in Paulding County, which is predominantly white and predominantly conservative.

“I will feel a lot safer with the deputies nearby,” she adds.

Holden also had security cameras installed in the lobby and hallways, the doors hardened, and panic buttons added throughout the office. She and her team took part in active shooter classes offered by local police, where they learned how to use a fire extinguisher as a weapon and secure a door with a belt or a purse strap.

Unlike many of her colleagues, Holden has never thought about quitting.

“Because I love what I do. And I’m not going to be bullied; I’m not going to be threatened for doing it,” she says, adding after a defiant pause, “I’m ready.”