Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Election workers must have security

Election workers must have security
Getty Images

Adair is Communications and Operations Associate at Stand Up America, a pro-democracy organization.

A county election worker in Oregon recently found himself in an unsettling situation during his rounds collecting ballots from dropboxes. A disgruntled woman, driving erratically, had been following him for hours. As the situation escalated, the woman began shouting that she had a gun and would continue filming him doing his job. Unfortunately, this election worker is not alone.


One in six local elections officials in America have experienced threats while on the job. The dedicated citizens who keep our elections running smoothly face an increasingly hostile political environment. While they’ve repeatedly sounded the alarm about the need for increased security funding, their calls for help have mostly fallen on deaf ears.

Election workers serve on the front lines of our democracy, helping to ensure every American can exercise their freedom to vote. They do the often thankless work while acting as facilitators of our elections—from collecting ballots from dropboxes to opening polling locations in the early hours of morning. Before 2020, election workers carried out their duties largely unnoticed, but this drastically changed after Donald Trump falsely accused them of rigging the presidential election for Joe Biden.

Trump’s lies exposed election workers to escalating threats despite the non-partisan nature of their work. As a communications professional at a national democracy organization, I monitor election news trends and have witnessed a dramatic spike in threats to election workers over the last year. Many election workers feel unprotected: in fact, only 27% say the federal government is doing a good job supporting their needs. It’s not surprising they feel this way when their calls for much-needed election security funding have been ignored by Congress.

Because of these threats, election workers are leaving the profession at a disturbing rate. A recent survey found that one in five local elections officials is unlikely to continue serving through 2024. Election administration will suffer if institutional knowledge is lost en masse before the next presidential election.

The federal government’s lack of urgency is astounding. The U.S. Department of Justice established the Election Threats Task Force in 2021, but a year later, out of more than the 1,000 cases it reviewed, there was only one individual tried and sentenced. President Joe Biden’s 2024 budget called for just $5 billion in election infrastructure funding over the next ten years, even as a bipartisan coalition of state and local officials estimates they’ll need $53 billion to safely and effectively administer elections over the next decade.

Our leaders on Capitol Hill have fallen even shorter. Congress appropriated just $75 million for election administration in fiscal year 2023. While this year’s appropriations process is ongoing, House Republicans have advanced legislation zeroing out election security funding altogether, leaving state and local elections officials to fend for themselves. The Senate did not follow their lead and included $75 million. However, this is still significantly less than the $400 million election administrators hoped for to make important improvements and repairs before the 2024 election.

In 2022, with conspiracy theories swirling, election officials understood that voters had more questions about their work. Rather than shy away, most administrators seized the opportunity to communicate with the public frequently and transparently. This dedication resulted in a dramatic increase in Americans’ trust in election administration compared with 2020. As election workers repair our democracy, the least Congress could do is invest in them and in our elections.

Some states have taken steps to shield their election workers from intimidation and harm. Oregon, Colorado, and Maine enacted or increased penalties for threats against election workers. But a nationwide threat requires a nationwide response.

It is alarming that a job once conducted in obscurity has now become a target for harassment, threats, and conspiracy theorists. Election workers serve on the front lines of American democracy, and Congress must do all it can to ensure they have the critical resources they need to stay safe while administering our elections safely and peacefully. Safeguarding Americans’ freedom to vote also means protecting democracy’s vital entry point for every American: their local election office.

Read More

Is Bombing Iran Deja Vu All Over Again?

The B-2 "Spirit" Stealth Bomber flys over the 136th Rose Parade Presented By Honda on Jan. 1, 2025, in Pasadena, California. (Jerod Harris/Getty Images/TNS)

Jerod Harris/Getty Images/TNS)

Is Bombing Iran Deja Vu All Over Again?

After a short and successful war with Iraq, President George H.W. Bush claimed in 1991 that “the ghosts of Vietnam have been laid to rest beneath the sands of the Arabian desert.” Bush was referring to what was commonly called the “Vietnam syndrome.” The idea was that the Vietnam War had so scarred the American psyche that we forever lost confidence in American power.

The elder President Bush was partially right. The first Iraq war was certainly popular. And his successor, President Clinton, used American power — in the former Yugoslavia and elsewhere — with the general approval of the media and the public.

Keep ReadingShow less
Conspiratorial Thinking Isn’t Growing–Its Consequences Are
a close up of a typewriter with the word conspiracy on it

Conspiratorial Thinking Isn’t Growing–Its Consequences Are

The Comet Ping Pong Pizzagate shooting, the plot to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and a man’s livestreamed beheading of his father last year were all fueled by conspiracy theories. But while the headlines suggest that conspiratorial thinking is on the rise, this is not the case. Research points to no increase in conspiratorial thinking. Still, to a more dangerous reality: the conspiracies taking hold and being amplified by political ideologues are increasingly correlated with violence against particular groups. Fortunately, promising new research points to actions we can take to reduce conspiratorial thinking in communities across the US.

Some journalists claim that this is “a golden age of conspiracy theories,” and the public agrees. As of 2022, 59% of Americans think that people are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories today than 25 years ago, and 73% of Americans think conspiracy theories are “out of control.” Most blame this perceived increase on the role of social media and the internet.

Keep ReadingShow less
Why a College Degree No Longer Guarantees a Good Job
woman wearing academic cap and dress selective focus photography
Photo by MD Duran on Unsplash

Why a College Degree No Longer Guarantees a Good Job

A college education used to be considered, along with homeownership, one of the key pillars of the American Dream. Is that still the case? Recent experiences of college graduates seeking employment raise questions about whether a university diploma remains the best pathway to pursuing happiness, as it once was.

Consider the case of recent grad Lohanny Santo, whose TikTok video went viral with over 3.6 million “likes” as she broke down in tears and vented her frustration over her inability to find even a minimum wage job. That was despite her dual degrees from Pace University and her ability to speak three languages. John York, a 24-year-old with a master’s degree in math from New York University, writes that “it feels like I am screaming into the void with each application I am filling out.”

Keep ReadingShow less