‘You better be scared’: wave of threats to officials foretell tense election year

The judge overseeing the election interference case against Donald Trump in Washington DC had her home visited by police after a fake emergency call, and attempts were made to do the same to prosecutor Jack Smith.

The Maine secretary of state was “swatted”, too, after she ruled that the former president could not appear on the ballot there because of the 14th amendment. The Colorado judges who ruled similarly have faced threats, leading to increased security.

There was also a round of bomb threats to state capitols, sent to secretaries of state and legislative offices, that were believed to be a hoax but led to evacuations around the country this month. Those hoaxes came after letters containing fentanyl were sent to elections office in a handful of states in November.

A recent wave of threats against elections officials and judges foretells a tense presidential election year that’s likely to see ongoing threats of political violence that could turn physical, as the future of US democracy hangs in the balance.

“It does seem sort of like it’s a message starting off the year, saying, ‘OK we are in 2024, and this is not going to be easy.' Elections are not going to go smoothly, and you better be scared,’” said Lilliana Mason, a political science professor at Johns Hopkins University who studies political violence.

The wave comes after several years of sustained threats to and harassment of elections officials, who have seen high turnover in their field as a result. It’s now part of the job to face an onslaught of harassing messages when running an election in the US.

While these recent threats haven’t carried physical violence, they aren’t innocent. They disrupt and intimidate the people involved – and they cause chaos, making it