State statutes that make it a crime to violate election laws and subject convicted election officials to criminal penalties amount to “harassment.”
That’s the conclusion of David Becker, founder and executive director of the non-partisan, non-profit Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR).
Becker served as moderator for a national video conference on the topic “When Local Elections and Local Election Officials are Threatened, What are the Implications for the Nation?”
The March 2 event, sponsored by the John McCain Institute of Washington D.C., provided a forum for key players in America’s election system to share their concerns for the well-being and safety of America’s local clerks and election administrators.
During his remarks, Becker condemned what he called, “coordinated massive threats, harassment, and criminal prosecution aimed at civil servants,” such as never “been seen before in our history.”
Becker cited the example of Wisconsin, where, he said, “election officials are threatened with arrest for having done their jobs admirably.”
Without mentioning it by name, Becker characterized the report of Special Counsel Michael Gableman documenting election misconduct in Wisconsin, which was released the day before the video conference, as “massive disinformation.”
To assist election officials around the country who may be facing prosecution for what Becker called “perceived malfeasance,” he created the Election Official Legal Defense Network.
The network has provided a criminal defense lawyer for one official, so far, Becker said.
Becker stated that many current election reforms are being used as a “pretext to dismantle election integrity infrastructure” and to “destroy and diminish election integrity.”
Republican Bill Gates, chairman of the Maricopa County, Arizona Board of Supervisors told the conference he is proud of the “outstanding election run in 2020 in Maricopa County.”
Gates detailed some of the pressure he and his fellow supervisors have felt from the criminal investigation waged against them by the office of Arizona’s Republican Attorney General, Mark Brnovich.
He said Brnovich has threatened to take away $700,000 in state revenue sharing for “us refusing to turn over [election computer] routers.”
According to Gates, the Board of Supervisors felt it did not have the legal authority to do so and that surrendering the routers would reveal “sensitive information,” which “would put law enforcement in peril.”
After losing in court, the board turned over the routers, Gates said.
As further evidence of the political pressure he and his colleagues on the board endured, Gates referred to the GOP-controlled state legislature’s 2021 resolution to hold Maricopa County officials in contempt.
The resolution failed by one vote when Republican State Senator Paul Boyer refused to go along with it.
Gates also referenced a bill now pending in the state House of Representatives that would divide Maricopa into four counties.
Maricopa County has a population of 4.5 million. Sixty percent of all Arizonans reside there.
According to Gates, 90 percent of the votes cast in the 2020 election in Maricopa County were mail-in votes.
Gates also told of the threats and harassment Maricopa officials suffered when citizens erected guillotines on the office lawn and mailed orange jumpsuits to members of the county board.
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a panelist at the conference, described an incident when a group protesting the conduct of the 2020 election appeared outside her home with bullhorns. “They threatened my family,” she said.
Benson opined that misinformation about the conduct of the 2020 election is being put forward by people seeking to become famous, to run for office, to raise money, and to create chaos.
The misinformation campaign is “deep, nefarious, anti-democratic, and un-American;” and it has been “doing the work of our [international] adversaries” in creating “chaos and convincing citizens not to vote,” stated Benson.
She said there were “election deniers” running for secretary of state positions around the nation on a platform of “misinformation, lies, and threats.”
Benson said she was glad to be in the company of, what she called, “professional election defenders.”
“I’ve lost friends over this,” he said.
Corley acknowledged that there has been intense questioning of the conduct of the 2020 election around the country, and even in Florida, where Donald Trump won handily.
“Margins don’t matter to the questioners,” said Becker.
The critics in Florida “want to be part of a larger movement. It’s like the election [2020] never ended,” said Corely.
Addressing Benson, Gates, and Corley; Becker stated, “Voters find it really easy to vote in your three states. It is very difficult to find an eligible voter that had trouble voting.”
He said, “All of your voting lists are as accurate as they have ever been.”
Benson stated that many election changes already passed or in the works in a number of states “harm the security of our elections.”
In the run-up to the 2020 presidential election, CEIR tag-teamed with the Zuckerberg-funded non-profit Center for Tech and Civic Life in efforts to “help election officials of both parties, all around the country, ensure that all eligible voters can vote conveniently in a system of maximum integrity.”
Of the 2020 election, Becker said it was “the most secure, transparent, and verified election in American history.”
