US election: Swing states, officials brace for conspiracy theories and violence

With the U.S. election just days away, officials in the most competitive battleground states are bracing for misinformation, conspiracy theories, threats, and possible violence.

In Philadelphia, Detroit, and Atlanta, three of former President Donald Trump’s favourite targets for false claims of voter fraud, officials have fortified their operations against a repeat of the chaos of 2020. Philadelphia’s ballot-counting warehouse is now surrounded by fencing topped with barbed wire. In Detroit and Atlanta, some election offices are protected by bullet-proof glass.

In Wisconsin, election workers have been trained on de-escalation techniques and polling stations rearranged so workers have escape routes if they are menaced by protestors.

In Arizona, an epicentre in 2020 for false claims by Republicans about rigged voting, the secretary of state is working with local officials on how to respond to misinformation, including deep-fake images of purported fraud.

As opinion polls show Republican Trump and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris neck and neck heading into Tuesday’s vote, officials say there’s one thing they can’t predict or control: What Trump and his allies might say on election night as the votes are still being counted.

“If it's razor thin, then they're going to throw everything they got, right?” said Philadelphia City Commissioner Lisa Deeley, a Democrat, in an interview. “There’s nothing we can do to stop the former president from continuing his campaign of misinformation and disinformation. But what we can do is continue to push back on that with facts.”

Deeley and 30 other election officials from both parties told Reuters they are preparing for a replay of 2020 when Trump and his lawyers pushed false charges about late-night ballot dumps and rigged machines in an effort to overturn his loss. In the wake of those claims, clerks around the country have been subjected to threats and harassment from Trump supporters convinced the election was stolen.

The Trump campaign did not respond directly to questions about plans to challenge the results. In a statement, Danielle Alvarez, a senior advisor for the campaign and the Republican National Committee, said the party had recruited 230,000 poll watchers, poll workers, and legal experts to “bring transparency and accountability” to the election.

"While Democrats will stop at nothing to weaken our elections, we are fighting for a fair and secure process where every legal vote is counted properly," she said.

Throughout his campaign, Trump has repeated the falsehood that he won in 2020 while signalling he would contest a possible loss to Harris.

On Friday, in a post on Trump’s Truth Social platform, he wrote that there was "rampant cheating and skulduggery" in 2020 and threatened election officials and others “involved in unscrupulous behaviour” this cycle with the prosecution.

Election officials say one of their biggest fears is a razor-close result where the outcome will hinge on court fights over small numbers of disputed ballots. The Republican National Committee has targeted election officials with dozens of lawsuits challenging various aspects of the voting process, a move seen by Democrats as a prelude to contesting a potential loss. Republican poll watchers, who monitor the casting and counting of ballots, have been trained to be aggressive in scrutinising the process, and their ranks are filled with activists who still deny the 2020 results, according to training calls reviewed by Reuters.

URBAN BATTLEGROUNDS

The tensions are especially acute in Philadelphia, Atlanta, and Detroit, major Democratic vote centres in crucial swing states. Trump accused them of allowing electoral fraud in 2020 and has done so again since the start of this campaign.

At an Iowa rally in December, he urged followers to go to the three cities and "guard the vote," a phrase that alarmed Democrats who warned it could prompt his supporters to intimidate voters or disrupt the counting.

Daniel Baxter, Detroit's chief operating officer for absentee voting and special projects, said the city is preparing for potential unrest in planning with local police and federal officials. Its election headquarters has been strengthened with armed guards and bullet-proof glass. The counting of mail-in ballots has been moved to a more secure location in the convention hall downtown. In 2020, Trump supporters sought to disrupt the process by pounding on windows and yelling "stop the count."

"We plan for a riot," Baxter said in an interview. “We just want to make sure that we have planned for the worst as we hope for the best.” He said he is unaffiliated with any party.

In a virtual meeting for prospective poll workers, an official with the Republican National Committee warned the volunteers that Detroit was not to be trusted. "Because that city, if I could get away with ... you know, burning it to the ground, I would try," said Morgan Ray, the RNC's director of election integrity for Michigan, according to a previously unreported recording of the Sept. 10 meeting obtained by Reuters. Ray and the RNC didn’t respond to requests for comment on her remarks.

Trump also singled out Detroit, America’s largest Black-majority city, saying on Oct. 10 that the rest of the country would become “like Detroit” if Harris wins. Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey, a Democrat, said she believes racism was at the root of Trump’s attacks on cities like hers. "He's the type of person that thinks that he can easily intimidate Detroiters because we're a predominantly black city,” she said in an interview. “But we're not intimidated by him at all."

The Trump campaign did not respond to a question about Winfrey’s remarks.

Philadelphia has overhauled vote counting since delays in 2020 created an opening for Trump and his allies to spread conspiracy theories and for his supporters to target election officials with threats. In 2020, election clerks in Philadelphia and elsewhere struggled with an avalanche of mail-in ballots, thanks to more liberal vote-by-mail rules adopted by many states in response to the pandemic.

On election night in 2020, Trump declared himself the winner after early returns showed him in the lead, even though thousands of ballots remained to be processed in Philadelphia. With the election in the balance, it took the city five days to count enough ballots to make clear that Biden had indeed won Pennsylvania, clinching his bid for the White House.

Since then, the city has moved its election operations to a warehouse, secured by fencing topped with barbed wire, 15 miles from the downtown convention centre where ballots were counted four years ago as protesters gathered outside. In Pennsylvania, unlike other states, state law bars election officials from beginning work on the mail ballots until 7 a.m. on Election Day.

Michigan, by contrast, in 2022 passed a law allowing for pre-processing of mail-in ballots. Election workers in Detroit now have eight days to verify and tabulate absentee ballots prior to Election Day. City clerk Winfrey said she hopes to report results in time for the 11 p.m. TV news on Nov. 5.

Philadelphia officials say they also expect to deliver numbers much more quickly this year, with nearly all ballots counted by Wednesday or Thursday. The city expects to receive more than 225,000 mail ballots, far fewer than the 375,000 that flooded in four years ago. The city has purchased new, faster machines to slice open envelopes and scan ballots, along with new technology that officials say speeds up the process of checking mail ballots.

Philadelphia’s commissioners said they hope announcing the results faster will tamp down the spread of disinformation in the time between the polls closing and news organisations declaring a winner.

“That is the window that allows for the greatest misinformation and disinformation to spread and for harassment and threats to come to election workers,” said Seth Bluestein, a Republican on the city’s three-person election commission. “So that's why it's so important for us to shrink that window and count the ballots as quickly as possible.”

In Atlanta’s majority-Black Fulton County, Georgia’s most populous area, officials are preparing for pro-Trump misinformation. In 2020, Trump's attorney, Rudolph Giuliani, falsely accused two Georgia election workers of counting illegal votes, triggering death threats against them and fuelling Trump’s false claim that he won the state. The Georgia state election board, now dominated by three pro-Trump Republicans, has called for new investigations of Fulton County.

Opinion polls in the state show Harris and Trump roughly even. On Election Night, if Harris appears to be winning the state, Georgia State Election Board Member Sara Tindall Ghazal, a Democrat, said she expects “to see disinformation” about election machines being hacked and tampering with the vote.

Fulton’s election board chair, Sherri Allen, a registered Democrat serving on the non-partisan body, said the county has taken steps to reassure sceptics. It opened last year a new vote-counting operation in a massive suburban warehouse, 21 miles from downtown Atlanta. The vote count will be televised on giant screens, promoting transparency. “You can see it on the screen as it’s happening,” Allen said. “We didn’t have that before.”

“DIFFERENT WORLD NOW”

Beyond these urban battlegrounds, election officials in Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, and North Carolina are making preparations.

In North Carolina, some county election offices have installed panic buttons, bulletproof glass, security cameras, and heavier doors, said State Board of Elections spokesperson Patrick Gannon. Election officials have been trained to defuse tensions with angry activists, he said. Police have been given pocket guides on election law in anticipation of increased challenges.

Nevada, where the 2020 election was not called until four days after the last ballots were cast, has changed laws and procedures to speed up counting and bolster confidence in the results. For the first time, mail-in ballots are being counted starting two weeks before Election Day. A new centralised statewide voter registration database allows citizens to track their ballots and make sure they accurately reflect their choices, which officials hope will quash concerns about mass fraud.

In Arizona, the secretary of state’s office said it has trained election officials to respond to AI-generated misinformation about the election, including deep-fake videos and images.

And in Wisconsin, the state legislature passed an election protection bill this year that created a new crime of battery of an election official. Some municipalities pushed through ordinances aimed at people who might try to disrupt voting. Madison, for instance, now has an ordinance providing for $1,000 fines for people found threatening or otherwise hampering the work of poll workers.

Some changes are as subtle as moving chairs to bolster the safety of poll workers.

In the small northern Wisconsin town of Caswell, clerk Tamaney “Sam” Augustin has shifted poll workers across the room, so they faced, rather than sat next to, the door — with two exits directly behind them.

“We’ve never had anything happen,” she said, “but we live in a different world now.”