Jan. 6 hearings show the threat to election workers. NC bill would confront that

Donald Trump’s slogan for 2016 and 2020 – Make America Great Again – has changed as he weighs running again in 2024.

Now his rallying cry is “Save America!”

The transformation from a nostalgic appeal to an urgent call reflects the determination of Trump and his followers to treat the upcoming elections as a kind of war in which the very existence of the nation is at stake.

What will matter won’t be the process, but the result. Forget about encouraging all to vote and counting votes fairly. The goal is to win at any cost, even if one of the casualties is democracy.

Defenders of democracy need to meet that threat with an urgency of their own. On Tuesday, North Carolina state Sen. Jay Chaudhuri (D-Wake) took such a step. He filed SB916, The Safeguard Fair Elections Act.

The proposed law seeks to defend those on the front-line of the democratic process – voters, poll workers and election officials. It would make it a crime to intimidate or threaten them.

“This legislation ensures that elections in the future will be decided by voters, not intimidation, threats, or even violence,” Chaudhuri said. “These protections are important as they defend citizens and officials who work every day to uphold our democracy.”

The legislation addresses a real and growing problem. The Jan. 6 committee hearing in Washington on Tuesday focused on the threats made to state and local officials in Georgia and Arizona as Trump and his allies sought to overturn his losses in those states. Chaudhuri also noted several instances of intimidation in North Carolina.

Karen Brinson Bell, the executive director of the N.C. State Board of Elections, has said that the invective directed at election volunteers and officials after the 2020 election has prompted retirements and made it more difficult to find people who will work at polls and oversee elections.

In a statement on Tuesday, Brinson Bell endorsed the aim of The Safeguard Fair Elections Act. North Carolina’s top elections official, who herself has been subjected to unfounded claims that she tried to help Democrats in 2020, said:

“Elections officials and poll workers should never be subjected to harassment or intimidation for doing their jobs. There is no place for such threats or harassment in a civil society, and unfortunately, we are seeing that more and more across the country. I applaud legislative efforts to strengthen protections for our ‘democracy heroes,’ and to further ensure that eligible voters can participate in elections without fear of intimidation.”

The voting process is about to come under greater attack. Election results also will face more potent challenges than those mounted by Trump and his bumbling and conspiracy-mongering legal team of Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and John Eastman.

The Washington Post reports that the Republican National Committee “is spending millions this year in 16 critical states on an unprecedented push to recruit thousands of poll workers and watchers, adding firepower to a growing effort on the right to find election irregularities that could be used to challenge results.”

How far Trump was willing to go to overturn a fair election is on display at the Jan. 6 committee hearings. The former president tried to strong-arm local election officials and Vice President Mike Pence. He incited an assault on the U.S. Capitol to prevent Congress from certifying the election results and he still promotes the “big lie” about how his fictional “landslide” victory was stolen.

That combative approach is putting democracy at risk. The key battles this fall and in 2024 will not be about winning a majority of votes. They will be about gaining control over who votes, how votes are thrown out and how election fraud claims are resolved.

Chaudhuri’s bill defends those who administer the voting process. He said, “Instead of demonizing our trusted neutral local election officials who are just doing their job for voters, let’s pick freedom over fear. Proof over accusations. Country over party. People over politics.”

The Safeguard Fair Elections Act offers protections that are unfortunately needed. How much so is likely to be demonstrated by the Republican-led legislature’s refusal to make those protections law.

This story was originally published June 22, 2022 at 10:28 AM.