The DOJ’s Election Threats Task Force has charged four individuals with threatening election officials in Colorado, Alabama, Florida, and Pennsylvania. Although they are unrelated cases, all of them are related to the actions of a task force put in place in 2021. The National Election Threats Task Force (ETTF) was charged with investigating individuals who “threaten violence in an effort to undermine our democratic institutions.”
Members of the ETTF first met in February 2019. Much of their agenda was finalized pursuant to an OAG letter sent in August 2021 by Kate Heinzelman, who was officially confirmed general counsel of the CIA in 2022.
In January and July of 2021, the ETTF published two reports. The reports were autopsies of the “crisis” brought about by the 2020 election with recommendations to ensure that such a crisis never occurs again. At the top of the agenda was concern over alleged “election deniers.” The Task Force was preoccupied with the “undermining of free and fair elections,” all propagated by “lies and conspiracy theories.” Take a wild guess about the profiles of these so-called “election deniers.”
The group bills itself as “cross-partisan,” but a little research tells me it isn’t. And although the aforementioned charges seem to be legitimate, many of the Task Force’s members and associates do not give off a non-partisan vibe.
Their membership includes members of progressive organizations like the Brennan Center for Justice, the notorious Center for Tech and Civic Life, and the Democracy Project. The organization throws in a few conservatives for good measure, but many of them barely qualify. Regardless, given the company they keep and the narratives they push, it is plausible that not all “threats to our elections” will be treated equally.
As an example of bias, the Task Force regularly references Protect Democracy messaging and projects on X. According to Influence Watch, the group is a “left-of-center” organization. Its X post on Oct. 22 references Part Two of its special series on “How election deniers create the impression of cheating.” The entry is a part of Protect Democracy’s “Special Series” on “Subverting 2024.”
The first sentence in the series entry directly refers to the threat of “telling lies about the 2024 election” and then goes on to talk about the “mob” that “stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021” while “hopped up on lies about a ‘rigged’ election.” Those are some pretty biased and inflammatory statements for a group that claims to be “cross-ideological.”
Take a gander at any point in the Election Task Force page on X, and you will find them attempting to debunk or minimize almost every “right-leaning” activist’s election-related initiative, from the “false claims of wide-spread non-citizen voting” to how well maintained the nation’s voter rolls are to the alleged poll participation that is allegedly producing “larger volumes of intimidation and violence.” Are these threats really occurring because citizens have dared to question the way elections are run in the U.S.?
The sad thing is that none of the above concerns should be identified as partisan. All Americans, regardless of stripe, should care about non-citizen voting; accurate voter rolls; and fraud-free, lawful elections.
The Task Force has raised the stakes since my original research on its activities. The group now has a 9/11-style threat-level dashboard with ratings of 0 to 3, with 0 being “No Concern” and 3 being “High Concern.” There are also categories of concern that include administration, mis-/disinformation, violence, and interference in elections. The group publishes a monthly summary of election threats as a part of its “Election 2024 Analysis.” It is effectively election threat central.
In the Fall of 2022, I wrote an article entitled “How Election Deniers Became Domestic Terrorists.” It discussed the way well-meaning Americans were being labeled as election deniers because they were participating in the “Big Lie.” The Big Lie is “the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump.”
There were and are narratives all over legacy media and social media demonizing average Americans who are engaged in civic duty. They are often characterized as a threat to our national security by our nation’s leaders.
Maybe that is because elections are one of CISA’s 16 sectors in our nation’s critical infrastructure. In 2017, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) designated election infrastructure “as a subset of the government facilities sector.” And then, of course, our own DHS has prioritized domestic terrorism as the greatest threat to the nation when there is scant basis for the concern.
Having covered many election-related stories, I have met countless everyday citizens who are more often than not data-driven and abiding by the law when examining how their local elections are conducted. However, they too often find themselves navigating what should not be the rough waters of holding election officials accountable. Moreover, they often wind up as defendants in costly lawsuits for trying to do the right thing.
The people I have interviewed are not a “threat to our democracy.” On the contrary, they are earnestly attempting to restore trust in our elections by reporting inaccurate voter registrations, testifying about unlawful election-related chain of custody issues, or merely holding politicians and officials accountable, to abide by the law. They monitor drop boxes to ensure that ballots are not trafficked. They attend election board meetings to exercise their right to participate in the process of ensuring that everyone’s vote is counted as it is cast.
These are people who spend precious time away from their families, volunteering, with little or no recognition for their efforts, only to be deemed existential threats to Democracy.
Arguably, there has not been this much civic participation in decades. Maybe it has been so long that government officials have forgotten whom they serve.
No one in his right mind supports violence against election officials. However, let’s hope that ideology and policy do not interfere with the DOJ’s ability to discern between a real threat and a concerned, engaged citizen.
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