How a police officer turned therapist helps election workers deal with threats and intimidation

CNN
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Every few weeks, a group of active-duty and retired police officers meet with election officials to plan for dire scenarios on Election Day.

What if someone shows up near a polling station with an assault rifle? Or is he using artificial intelligence to imitate the voice of a county clerk and make a bomb threat?

The sessions, held across the country, can stir intense emotions for current and former election officials, some of whom have faced harassment or death threats that have taken a toll on their mental health.

At the end of the sessions, Harold Love, a retired Michigan state trooper turned therapist, stands and addresses the group.

“I talk to them about how normal it is for them to feel this way,” Love told CNN. “You start to see heads nodding. When you see other people feeling the same or similar things, you now think, “Okay, I’m not going crazy.”

Four years ago, these sessions were not necessary. Few in law enforcement or in the election community anticipated the increase in violent threats — often based on false conspiracy theories about voter fraud promoted by former President Donald Trump and his allies — directed at election workers during the 2020 election.

The Committee for Safe and Secure Elections (CSSE), which hosts the security exercises where Love speaks, was formed in 2022. It filled a void: Law enforcement and election officials needed a space to confront a new reality in the United States, where once unknown election workers can be the target of public vitriol.

Four years after the 2020 elections, the threat level has not decreased and hostile rhetoric towards election workers is the order of the day.

According to a survey published in May by the Brennan Center for Justice, 38 percent of local election officials have experienced “threats, abuse or intimidation while doing their jobs.” Many have left the profession and been replaced by less experienced election workers.

US officials are concerned that belief in voter fraud or other “election-related grievances” could motivate domestic extremists to commit violence in the weeks before and after the November election, as occurred during the deadly January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol, according to a recent federal intelligence bulletin obtained by CNN.

Federal officials have conducted numerous security assessments of polling places and other election infrastructure over the past year. Federal and election officials are on edge, trying to take all security measures to prevent a violent attack on election workers.

Election officials in battleground states are taking nothing for granted. Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes knows firsthand the unrest that false claims of voter fraud can cause. Fontes was a top election official in Maricopa County, Arizona’s largest, in 2020 when an armed mob showed up after Election Day.

“We must be prepared to respond to the actions of domestic terrorists – their threats, any real violence they decide to commit,” Fontes told CNN.

He said Arizona election workers are ready: “We are a cordial bunch.”

Love, the ex-state trooper, started talking to election officials as a therapist after his girlfriend Tina Barton, a former Republican clerk in the city of Rochester Hills, Michigan, received death threats in the aftermath of the 2020 election.

As a clerk, Barton mentioned a claim that Ronna McDaniel, then-chairman of the Republican National Committee, made at a news conference, claiming that 2,000 ballots in Rochester Hills had been “given” to Democrats.

Days later, an Indiana man left a voicemail for Barton. “F— your family, f— your life, and you deserve to be put to the sword,” the man said, according to prosecutors. He was later sentenced to 14 months in prison

Now, as a private election security consultant, Barton told CNN she uses her experience to deal with election officials under duress.

“We’re seeing people walk away from this great profession that they really love,” said Barton, who co-founded CSSE and has attended its safety exercises. The threats, intimidation and other pressure have led some election officials, or their family members, to say: “’Enough is enough. We don’t want you to live in this state of mind,” Barton said.

The Justice Department has secured more than a dozen convictions in connection with threats against election officials, but these prosecutions are too few and far between for many election officials and their advocates.

Election officials who have remained in office despite the threats are drawing on their traumatic experiences in 2020.

When Al Schmidt was Philadelphia commissioner during the 2020 election, he said he didn’t know which law enforcement agency to report violent threats to.

The threats became more specific and targeted at Schmidt’s children after Trump mentioned him by name in a tweet days after the 2020 election, according to Schmidt’s testimony before the House of Representatives committee investigating on Jan. 6.

Four years later, Schmidt is Pennsylvania’s secretary of state, overseeing election administration across the state. He also leads the state’s Election Threats Task Force, which includes state and federal law enforcement and is designed to more quickly identify threats to election workers.

“It would be naive not to prepare for the possibility of this happening again,” Schmidt said of the threats he and other election workers received in 2020.