Arizona secretary of state calls threats to election officials ‘domestic terrorism’

The rising threats against US elections officials are a form of domestic terrorism, the secretary of state in the presidential campaign battleground state of Arizona has said.

“Terrorism is defined as a threat of violence for a political outcome,” Adrian Fontes said in remarks recorded for an NBC Meet the Press episode airing on Sunday morning. “That’s what this is, and … we do have to address it for what it is.”

Fontes’s comments came as he formed part of a Meet the Press panel of top elections officials from states whose voters could decide in November whether Joe Biden serves a second term in the White House or Donald Trump returns to the presidency.

The Guardian has reported how Arizona’s most populous county, Maricopa, has taken extraordinary measures to protect its staff and the counting of ballots. Election workers there endure a daily torrent of hateful and menacing messages over email and social media as Trump and his Republican supporters continue to lie that Biden and his Democratic allies fraudulently stole the 2020 presidential race from him.

Fontes, a Democrat and retired US marine, told Meet the Press that such abuse was not enough to get him “off of his post” personally. But, he added: “I will say … it has [affected] not just us but our families as well.

“You know, when you have to tell your neighbors, ‘Hey, pay attention, if something happens, the kids might have to come over,’ or to have go-bags ready, or to any number of these things so many people across the country have had to suffer through – that’s a problem,” Fontes said. “One of the ways that I have been looking at this and addressing this is telling the really hard truth. And that is this: threats against elections officials in the United States of