Ruby Freeman Counted Votes
Ruby Freeman was a temporary election worker in Fulton County, Georgia. She and her daughter, Shaye Moss, processed absentee ballots on election night 2020. A surveillance video of them doing their jobs was clipped, distorted, and shared by Rudy Giuliani and conservative media as supposed evidence of election fraud.
There was no fraud. An investigation cleared both women of every allegation. But the conspiracy theory had already done its work.
Freeman received so many threats that she packed up and left the suburban Atlanta home where she had lived for 20 years. Moss testified before the January 6 committee that she no longer went to the grocery store, no longer lived a normal life, and gained 60 pounds from the stress.
They were poll workers. They counted votes. The president of the United States named them on national television. And their lives were destroyed.
1 in 6 Threatened. 1 in 5 Leaving.
The Brennan Center for Justice surveyed election officials across the country. One in six had experienced threats. One in five said they were likely to leave their jobs before 2024. About 1 in 5 election officials in 2024 had begun service after the 2020 election, meaning the experienced workers were replaced by people who had never administered an election.
1 in 6 election officials experienced threats. 1 in 5 said they were likely to leave. The people who know how elections work are being driven out.
In deep-red Texas counties, nearly entire election office staffs resigned after harassment. In Maricopa County, Arizona, Republican chief elections officer Stephen Richer faced death threats after overseeing the 2020 audit and stopped attending political events for his safety.
The threats came with fentanyl-laced letters sent to election offices. Warnings that workers would be lynched. Home addresses shared online.
20 Charged. Hundreds of Cases.
The DOJ’s Election Threats Task Force has charged 20 people with threat-related crimes. An Iowa man received 2.5 years in prison for leaving a message threatening to “lynch” and “hang” an Arizona election official.
Reuters identified at least 300 cases of political violence since the January 6 Capitol attack. 51 cases occurred in 2024 alone.
What It Means for 2026
When experienced election workers leave and are replaced by people with no institutional knowledge, elections become more vulnerable to errors, delays, and manipulation. The mail voting executive order adds new requirements that election offices must implement. The SAVE Act would add documentary proof requirements. States are purging voter rolls. Each of these changes requires experienced staff to implement correctly.
The people with that experience are being threatened out of their jobs. The threats are not a side effect of election denial. They are the mechanism by which election administration is weakened. Intimidate the workers. Replace them with loyalists. Change the rules. The 5-step pattern describes this as Step 5.
Read more on the Voting Rights series and the democracy scores brief.