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Tag: 2024 election

  • MAGA Influencers Are Making One Last Push for Donald Trump

    MAGA Influencers Are Making One Last Push for Donald Trump

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    Pro-Trump influencers and surrogates are flooding social media with resources encouraging supporters to get out the vote in the final days of the 2024 presidential election.

    “Patriots, I’m partnering with the Trump campaign for a final election push and we need your help,” David Leatherwood, a Republican influencer whose username is BrokebackPatriot, posted to X on Sunday. “The portal helps ensure your voter registration is active to make sure you’re [sic] VOTE COUNTS!”

    “TEAM TRUMP NEEDS YOU,” Morgonn Blaire McMichael, an influencer and Turning Point USA contributor, posted to X on Sunday. “This is how we will WIN! COMMIT YOUR VOTE!”

    Dozens of these creators and supporters are posting links to a Trump campaign site where voters can check their registration status, find their polling locations, or where to drop off their ballots.

    Republican creators are planning to be all over the country supporting Trump’s campaign come Tuesday night.

    CJ Pearson, a conservative creator with more than half a million followers X, said he’ll be in Palm Beach, Florida, the home of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, for election night. McMichael will be joining a New York Young Republicans party where she expects to see other conservative creators. Some pro-Trump creators told WIRED that they plan to host live streams of the election results on their platforms or join other streams hosted by their friends. The Peter Thiel–backed conservative dating app, Right Stuff, is throwing an election-night party in New York City on Tuesday.

    Groups of pro-Trump influencers have been gathering throughout the campaign. During the October vice presidential debate between JD Vance and Tim Walz, the Trump campaign set up an influencer war room, amplifying Vance’s jabs and positive coverage. Popular social media personalities including Pearson, Jack Posobiec, Ashley St. Clair, and Rogan O’Handley sat in a Philadelphia conference room with their phones and computers posting debate-related content.

    Even with these well-organized influencers, the Trump campaign’s get-out-the-vote effort has been mired in chaos, with Turning Point USA and the Elon Musk-backed America PAC taking over canvassing efforts in hotly contested battleground states. Last week, WIRED reported that out-of-state canvassers and door-knockers hired by an America PAC contractor were subjected to shocking working conditions, like being driven around in the back of a U-Haul and threatened with paying for accommodation if they didn’t meet canvassing quotas. A dozen of these paid canvassers were fired and stranded in Michigan after speaking out.

    America PAC has not revealed the scale of its canvassing operations, but The New York Times reported on Sunday that it averaged around 1 million doors in each battleground state, including Arizona, Georgia, and Michigan. There are reportedly around 2,500 total canvassers who are asked to hit 150 doors per day.

    Musk’s field operations, meanwhile, appear to pale in comparison to the Kamala Harris campaign’s ground operations. On Saturday alone, the Harris campaign says it knocked on more than 807,000 doors in Pennsylvania, 215,000 in Wisconsin, and 265,000 in Michigan. By Sunday evening, the Harris campaign said that more than 90,000 volunteers knocked on over 3 million doors in battleground states. Pro-Harris influencers and supporters are expected to gather at Howard University in Washington, DC, for the campaign’s watch party.

    Terrace Garnier, a content creator and model who was recently diagnosed with heart failure, traveled from her home in Maryland to Pennsylvania on Sunday to get out the vote for Harris.

    “This was my call. This was my mission. This is my calling,” says Garnier. “That’s why I felt it was so important to drive six, almost seven hours to canvas in a neighborhood that doesn’t even belong to me, because that’s how important it is to me that we cannot let this election slide. We cannot show any slack.”

    You can follow all of WIRED’s 2024 presidential election coverage here.

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  • Elon Musk Has Spent the Final Days Before the Election Posting About Peanut the Squirrel

    Elon Musk Has Spent the Final Days Before the Election Posting About Peanut the Squirrel

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    Billionaire X owner Elon Musk has become one of former president Donald Trump’s most important backers. Since Musk endorsed Trump in July, he has pulled out all the stops to support his candidacy. Musk has donated more than $100 million to his Trump-supporting America PAC; he criss-crossed the swing state of Pennsylvania holding town halls; he’s spoken at Trump rallies in Butler, Pennsylvania, and New York City; hosted Trump for an interview on X; and put the full weight of the social media platform he owns behind Trump’s presidential bid.

    But with mere days to go before the polls open, Musk spent the weekend posting on X mostly about a squirrel.

    Specifically, Peanut, an orphaned pet squirrel adopted by Mark Longo, a resident of New York state. Videos of Longo with Peanut garnered hundreds of thousands of views on TikTok and Instagram. Longo also had adopted a pet raccoon named Fred. But on October 30, according to the Associated Press, local government officials responded to anonymous complaints about the animals, and both were euthanized after the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) removed them from Longo’s home.

    “On Oct. 30, DEC seized a raccoon and squirrel sharing a residence with humans, creating the potential for human exposure to rabies. In addition, a person involved with the investigation was bitten by the squirrel,” the DEC said in a statement. “To test for rabies, both animals were euthanized.”

    Longo posted about the incident on Instagram, and it gained steam on social media over the weekend. A GoFundMe for Longo entitled “Call for Justice for Peanut the Squirrel and NYSDEC Reform” has currently raised more than $150,000.

    Musk seized on the story, posting or reposting about the incident on X at least 20 times between Saturday and Sunday, framing it as an example of government overreach, particularly by Democratic party-run governments.

    “The government should not be allowed to barge into your house and kill your pet! That’s messed up,” Musk said in one post that garnered 23.7 million views. “Even if it is illegal to have a pet squirrel (which it shouldn’t be), why kill PNut instead of simply releasing him into the forest!?” In another, which racked up more than 35 million views, he asked, “why is the Democratic Party so cruel?”

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  • It’s Election Week. Brace Yourselves

    It’s Election Week. Brace Yourselves

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    When WIRED launched a politics vertical in January of this year, our decision wasn’t without critics. WIRED is best known, after all, as a “technology publication,” a place that can help you understand the changing landscape of consumer products and technological innovation; one that goes deep on TikTok trends and champions sustainability. We’re somewhere audiences can nerd out over new phones, new memes, new heat pumps. You guys love heat pumps.

    At the time, though, our decision was firm and our logic was simple: You just can’t unravel technology or science or online culture from politics anymore. We grounded the launch of WIRED Politics in plenty of potential intersections we saw playing out in the year ahead. There was the potential for generative AI to disrupt campaigns and elections, as well as the ongoing influence of disinformation campaigns, and the certainty that we’d see more foreign meddling and hacking exploits like the DNC’s 2015 and 2016 hacks. Not to mention the steady rise of online pundits and influencers, on platforms like Twitch and TikTok, whose voices mattered more to many voters than those of TV hosts or newspaper editorial boards.

    Ultimately, all of those factors played important roles in this year’s global elections and have been notable to the US presidential race. But at WIRED, tech and politics proved even more interwoven than even we’d expected: Look at the disturbing far-right pivot of some in Silicon Valley’s elite ranks, most notably Elon Musk, who has turned his X account into a megaphone for Donald Trump and opened his vast coffers to move the election in Trump’s favor; consider the devastating implications of Project 2025, a GOP-linked policy blueprint for a second Trump presidency, on everything from climate change to our children’s education; and take note of just how unprecedented both campaigns were in their embrace of influencers and alternative online media to capture potential voters.

    And now, well, here we are. In the coming days (maybe weeks, hopefully not months), a profoundly polarized country will eke out a decision. The United States will choose its future; one that roughly half this country is almost sure to disavow. If you read WIRED with any consistency, our politics are probably crystal clear to you: A better future, for us, is grounded first and foremost in respect for people—all of them. That means upholding our democratic institutions; it means making an unwavering commitment to human rights and bodily autonomy; and it means recognizing that (no shit!) climate change is an existential emergency. Securing a better future also requires starting from a shared understanding of the present—a framework of reality, of what’s true and what isn’t. It’s something that Donald Trump, the GOP, and the throng of conspiratorial, racist, dangerous enablers who surround them have completely lost touch of, putting this country’s future at great risk.

    In other words, we’re voting for Kamala Harris. The alternative is a future too abhorrent for even the most dystopian imaginations at WIRED to contemplate.

    As for this week: WIRED reporters will be fanned out across the country and covering the election across our digital platforms, including on Instagram and TikTok. David Gilbert will be reporting from the Sun Belt swing states of Arizona and Nevada; Vittoria Elliott will be traveling across Pennsylvania, while Tim Marchman covers the crucial southeastern corner of the state; and Makena Kelly will go where the influencers are—figuratively and literally. Starting today, you can follow WIRED’s election coverage on our liveblog, where we’ll be tracking propaganda, election conspiracy theories, what the major players in tech are doing and saying, and what our reporters are seeing and hearing.

    Whatever the outcome, WIRED will continue to boldly and fearlessly cover the future as it unspools before all of us—and hold the creators of that future, including our political leaders and governmental institutions, to account. So take the time to vote if you haven’t already, take a few deep breaths if you’ve been holding yours, and together, let’s step into whatever comes next.

    Please consider subscribing to WIRED. Readers like you make our journalism possible. And to our loyal subscribers, thank you for your continued support.



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  • In Pews Across America, Evangelicals Are Told That God Wants Donald Trump

    In Pews Across America, Evangelicals Are Told That God Wants Donald Trump

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    Feucht spent the Sunday before the election in Scottsdale, Arizona, with Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk and Republican senatorial candidate Kari Lake, hosting a worship service called Pray For The Nation (Kirk endorsed Feucht during his congressional run).

    Other groups that have spent millions of dollars to get Trump reelected with get out the vote efforts are Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition, the American Family Association’s ivoterguide.com, the Paula White-led National Faith Advisory Board, and My Faith Votes, Montgomery tells WIRED.

    “Many Christian-right media figures have significant media platforms which they use to promote Trump to their supporters. Shows like FlashPoint on Kenneth Copeland’s Victory Channel provide a steady flow of pro-Trump propaganda,” Montgomery said. “Conservative Christians have been told over and over again that Trump has been anointed by God to lead the country. At a recent rally on the National Mall, New Apostolic Reformation leader Che Ahn issued an ‘apostolic decree’ that Trump would win the election.”

    While many conservative politicians have enjoyed broad support from evangelical Christians in the past, the way evangelical leaders speak about Trump as a messianic leader, particularly in the wake of the failed assassination attempt in July, is something new.

    “Because many of Trump’s core evangelical advisers and most prominent evangelical boosters are charismatic, they have also used charismatic spirituality to imbue Trump with a quasi-messianic aura, using their prophecies and messages to link him to many biblical characters,” Matthew Taylor, a senior scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies in Baltimore, where he specializes in American Christianity, tells WIRED. “Paula White-Cain has been the chair of all of these efforts and a gatekeeper controlling religious leaders’ access to Trump, so she has played a pivotal role in guiding these connections.”

    As well as supporting Trump’s candidacy, evangelicals are also more willing to indulge the former president’s baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

    “Evangelical Christians, particularly, but not exclusively white evangelicals, have been [Trump’s] most unwavering bloc of supporters,” Taylor said. “ If roughly one third of the country believes Trump’s 2020 election lies, among white evangelicals it’s closer to two-thirds.”

    Trump, who has struggled to present himself as a man of faith—in 2016, he proved unfamiliar with even the naming conventions of Biblical texts—has himself also been taking part, attending a “Believers for Trump” event in Michigan last month and taking part in a “national faith summit” organized by his first adminstratiuon’s faith leader Paula White last week.

    “We believe you’re a vessel,” Pastor Jentezen Franklin told Trump on stage during the event. “You’re a chosen vessel,” he added, while comparing the former president to the Apostle Paul.

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  • Tracking Elon Musk’s Activities Over the Last Month Ahead of the Election

    Tracking Elon Musk’s Activities Over the Last Month Ahead of the Election

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    Billionaire X owner Elon Musk has become one of former president Donald Trump’s most important financial backers, and certainly his most vocal in Silicon Valley, since endorsing him in July.

    For the final month of the US presidential campaign, Musk has been pulling out all the stops, going “all in” on getting Trump back into the Oval Office, both online and IRL. He’s appeared at rallies; hosted town halls; poured well over $100 million into his own pro-Trump political action committee (PAC); started a (possibly illegal) giveaway of $1 million a day to voters in swing states; and used his social media platform and over 200 million followers to bolster pro-Trump messaging and conspiracy theories that could undermine faith in the election.

    We’ve created a timeline to show Musk’s last month leading up to the election, with a particular focus on when he’s acting as a campaign surrogate, discussing how he might slot into a future administration, or putting money behind the campaign itself.

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  • Election Deniers Are Out in Full Force. We Went Where They Did

    Election Deniers Are Out in Full Force. We Went Where They Did

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    Mindy Robinson has spent four years telling her hundreds of thousands of followers online that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. But just days away from the 2024 vote, she has a unique new tactic to prove it’s getting stolen again: not casting her ballot at all.

    “I’m not voting, I want to see if [my ballot] gets counted while I didn’t do anything,” Robinson, who desperately wants Trump to win, tells WIRED at a Las Vegas restaurant on Saturday morning. “I want to see it magically show up as counted. It’s the only fucking thing I can do at this point.”

    Just miles away, JD Vance and Donald Trump Jr. were at the Whitney Recreation Center, where they urged their supporters to get out and vote.

    As Tuesday’s vote looms, the well-funded and lucrative election denial movement that sprung up after former president Donald Trump lost the 2020 election is already calling foul, pushing conspiracies about immigrants voting and harassing election workers.

    The weekend ahead of the election, Robinson and thousands of others like her are challenging election officials and spreading conspiracy theories online and in person. Right-wing election observers are already at polling sites and voting tabulation centers; this weekend, election officials in Shasta County, California, walked off the job because of the aggressive behavior of election observers.

    These election deniers have spent years building and buying an alternative reality sold by far-right groups that have been working around the clock to activate and train them. The groups are well-connected: The Election Integrity Network is run by former Trump adviser Cleta Mitchell, and True the Vote, a Texas-based group, was cofounded by election denial superstar Catherine Engelbrecht, who has worked on dropbox monitoring and voter roll purge initiatives around the country for more than a decade. Election observers have also been trained in online calls by pro-Trump groups like Turning Point USA and the campaign’s own TrumpForce47.

    Over livestreams and in conferences around the US, these groups have prepared thousands of activists for this very moment.

    Since the 2020 presidential election, Robinson has become something of a celebrity in MAGA world. She calls Laura Loomer a friend and says Roger Stone phones her to get the lowdown on breaking news. She has more than 400,000 followers on X and her own show—called Conspiracy Truths—on the America Happens Network, a platform she founded with her business partner Vem Miller, who was recently arrested at a Trump rally in possession of a shotgun and a handgun. There are few conspiracy theories Robinson, an actress with more than 150 credits to her name on IMDB, doesn’t indulge in: In addition to believing the 2020 election was stolen, she also thinks most major school shootings are perpetrated by crisis actors, that shadowy organizations are implementing digital currencies to control the population, that Covid-19 was released as a bioweapon, that Covid vaccines are untested and kill people, that January 6 was an inside job. She even believes the moon landing didn’t happen.

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  • Canvassers for Elon Musk’s America PAC Were Fired and Stranded in Michigan After Speaking Out

    Canvassers for Elon Musk’s America PAC Were Fired and Stranded in Michigan After Speaking Out

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    “Our subcontractors never should have driven their canvassers in a U-Haul van and those involved were immediately reprimanded,” Tim Pollard of Blitz Canvassing tells WIRED.

    On Wednesday, October 30, Muldrow and her fellow door knockers were fired hours after the publication of the WIRED story.

    At first, some people had trouble logging into Campaign Sidekick, the glitchy app used by America PAC for canvassing. There was confusion before they were finally told it was over: “Everyone is fired,” said Jones, who served as the door knockers’ manager, in a GroupMe chat, according to screenshots obtained by WIRED.

    Jones did not reply to a request for comment.

    Muldrow thought Jones might be joking about everyone getting fired, but some of the door knockers noticed they had been locked out of Campaign Sidekick, according to the group chat.

    “I called my mom immediately,” Muldrow says. “My mom told me I was overreacting because, it’s [my] cousin, so she was like, ‘Oh, maybe she’s playing a joke on you guys. Don’t take it literal.’ And my mom was like, ‘She sent you up there in the first place. You went with her. If anything, you would have your flight home through her. She’s not going to let you be stranded.’”

    Then, Muldrow says, Jones began asking the door knockers which one of them spoke to the press.

    As arguments ensued, Muldrow started to fear for her safety. Muldrow packed up her belongings and called Connor Berdy, a 29-year-old political consultant based in Warren, Michigan and the founder of Vote For Change LLC, a consulting group in Southeast Michigan for his community organizing work.

    Muldrow had met Berdy—who runs canvassing operations for school board, county commission, and judicial candidates—when, by chance, one of his employees struck up a chat with her while she was canvassing near their home on October 23. Berdy and Muldrow got lunch soon after, and Muldrow told him about how the door knockers in her group had been tricked, threatened, and driven around in U-Hauls to their door knocking locations.

    Management had “clearly not prioritized the safety of the workers or the integrity of the operation,” says Berdy.

    Berdy then arrived, and pretended to be an Uber driver to get Muldrow out of the situation. He had already bought Muldrow a flight back home to Florida, paying out of his own pocket.

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  • Elon Musk’s America PAC Hit With Class Action Lawsuit

    Elon Musk’s America PAC Hit With Class Action Lawsuit

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    Elon Musk’s America PAC and several other defendants, including the reelection campaign for Representative Michelle Steel, a Republican from California, are accused of violating California labor law in a class action lawsuit filed in Orange County on October 30, according to court documents obtained by WIRED.

    The named plaintiffs, Tamiko Anderson and Patricia Kelly, were canvassers for Steel in October of this year, according to the suit, which alleges that they weren’t paid agreed-upon wages. America PAC is named because it provided campaigning services for Steel.

    The plaintiffs are also suing over an alleged failure to reimburse business expenses and for allegedly being provided inaccurate wage statements. The suit seeks class certification for all current and former canvassers who were non-exempt employees of the Steel campaign from October 30, 2023 to the present.

    These allegations are different from those WIRED reported earlier this week, when canvassers in Michigan said they were tricked and threatened as part of Elon Musk and America PAC’s get-out-the-vote effort for Donald Trump. The door knockers, who worked for a subcontractor of America PAC, were flown to Michigan, driven in the back of a U-Haul, and told they would have to pay hotel bills unless they met unrealistic quotas. One was surprised to find, upon arrival in Michigan, that they were working to elect Donald Trump.

    The Blair Group, a North Carolina firm that the complaint claims is a political consultancy, and Liberty Staffing Services, a Florida firm specializing in hiring and payroll for canvassers and other W2 employees of political campaigns, are the other named defendants. Neither immediately responded to requests for comment. The suit also lists unknown Johns Doe as defendants.

    The plaintiffs are owed money, according to the suit.

    “As with other members of the Class, Plaintiffs were guaranteed an agreed upon wage hourly wage [sic] upon starting their employment. However, Plaintiffs are informed and believe that Defendants failed to pay them at the correct hourly wage, and, instead, paid them based on the number of residences they canvassed. To date, Plaintiffs have yet to receive the underpaid wages owed to them,” the complaint states.

    The defendants in the lawsuit also were not reimbursed for downloading various apps on their personal devices, according to the complaint. The plaintiffs also allege their cell phones were used to track time worked, but that they still were not compensated for those hours.

    America PAC, into which Musk has poured more than $100 million, has largely taken up get-out-the-vote operations in key swing states for the Donald Trump campaign. Widespread reports depict its operations as a mess, though—in addition to WIRED’s reporting on its efforts in Michigan, The Guardian has reported that up to 25 percent of its door knocks may be fraudulent, and NBC has reported that campaign operatives have concerns about “suspect data.” In an election all polls show as a toss-up, a shambolic field operation could well mean the difference between victory and defeat.

    Neither Alex Spiro, Musk’s attorney, nor a spokesperson for X, which Musk owns, immediately replied to requests for comment and requests to be put in touch with a representative of America PAC, which does not list contact information on its website. The Steel campaign also did not immediately reply to requests for comment. A representative for The Blair Group also did not return a request for comment.

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  • What an ‘Airbnbopoly’ Game Says About Silicon Valley’s Standoff With Lina Khan

    What an ‘Airbnbopoly’ Game Says About Silicon Valley’s Standoff With Lina Khan

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    Four years ago, one of Vice President Kamala Harris’ top donors—the billionaire cofounder of LinkedIn Reid Hoffman—celebrated the IPO of Airbnb, a company he was heavily invested in, by fashioning Monopoly boards where the game’s “jail” space is replaced by “government regulation.”

    Since Harris became the Democratic presidential nominee, many billionaire tech investors have come out of the woodwork to support her campaign. While they often tout Harris as a business-friendly politician, they’ve been vocal in their dislike of Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan’s antitrust agenda. Hoffman is one of the most influential donors in that group. He has donated tens of millions of dollars in support of the Biden and Harris campaigns and has organized other wealthy tech investors to do so as well.

    When Airbnb went public in December 2020, the company was valued at more than $47 billion. Hoffman sent at least a handful of other investors a board game styled after Monopoly called “Airbnopoly,” according to images of the game obtained by WIRED. A top Airbnb investor confirmed that he was one of several people who received the game from Hoffman and his venture firm Greylock Partners.

    The box is labeled as “a Reid Hoffman and Greylock production,” and it contains all of the pieces typically included in the classic board game, like cards, dice, and game pieces—all with a travel theme. Instead of a top hat or a thimble, players can navigate the board with an airplane seat, golf club, flip flops, and so on. The spaces on the board are customized, too, to include airports instead of railroads and Airbnb locations rather than Atlantic City streets. In one telling modification, instead of a “Go to Jail” space, the board tells players to go back to a “Government Regulation” corner space. If players avoid government regulation, they move across a path titled “Progress.”

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    Some spaces on the board require the players to pay government-issued fines, taxes, or trust and safety fees. “Recent developments in American politics make you curious about living in Canada,” reads one of the game’s cards.

    Airbnbopoly is clearly more of a novelty gift than a screed against big government. “Reid is a huge lover of board games, having played Settlers of Catan, et cetera, for many, many years, so he made a custom board game called Settlers of Silicon Valley and gifted it to many friends,” says Aria Finger, podcast cohost and chief of staff for Hoffman told WIRED. “Then for Airbnb he thought a custom game would be a nice, unique gesture, and the Monopoly board easily lent itself to Airbnb’s various rentals, so he decided on that.”

    Still, it has become public at a time when Hoffman and his Silicon Valley contemporaries have called for Khan to be fired under a possible Harris administration.

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    Since Khan was confirmed as chair in 2021, the FTC has gone after tech giants like Amazon, Google, and Meta for possible anticompetitive behavior. Many of these lawsuits have failed, while others are ongoing. Khan’s biggest win came in August when a judge found that Google had maintained an illegal monopoly in the online search market.

    In 2016, Hoffman sold LinkedIn to Microsoft, and he sits on the company’s board. Microsoft is reportedly currently under FTC investigation as part of a probe into collaborations and investments in artificial intelligence. A spokesperson for Hoffman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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  • Election Violence Is Already Here

    Election Violence Is Already Here

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    A man in a white van circled an early voting site in Loxahatchee, Florida, and shouted antisemitic and racist slurs at a group of people campaigning outside. A man who went to vote in Orangeburg, South Carolina, brawled with election workers after he was asked to remove his Trump hat. A man in Tempe, Arizona, was arrested for shooting up a DNC office three times.

    These are just some of the disturbing incidents that have taken place in the last ten days alone.

    WIRED is tracking how disinformation and heightened political rhetoric is spilling out into the real world as Election Day nears, manifesting in the form of acts of sabotage, intimidation, and violence. Please reach out via this form with tips.

    Authorities are on high alert for election-related violence this year. Since 2020, election workers have faced a constant barrage of threats, harassment and stalking at such a level that the DOJ formed a special division just to investigate those types of threats. A series of intelligence memos reported by WIRED indicate that officials are bracing for potential chaos and sabotage from “insider threats,” as well as possible attacks on voting infrastructure for the 2024 US election. The V-Dem Institute, a political science think-tank based in Sweden which takes a data-driven approach to measuring and conceptualizing democracies around the world, put out a report that predicted a “relatively high likelihood of electoral violence” for the election.

    We’ve compiled a total of 13 recent confirmed incidents so far, and we’ll keep updating as we go.

    10/22/2024 — Tempe, Arizona

    Jeffrey Michael Kelly, 60, was arrested and detained on terrorism charges in connection for three shootings outside a Democratic National Committee office over the course of two weeks in late September. Police said he also affixed razor blades and bags of white powder labeled “biohazard” to anti-Democrat signs erected around his home. They discovered 250,000 rounds of ammo, 120 firearms, and a grenade launcher when they searched his home, and believe he was prepping for a “mass casualty event.”

    10/23/2024 — Phoenix, Arizona

    A USPS box was set on fire, and approximately 20 mail-in ballots were damaged. Dieter Klofkorn, 35, was taken into custody on suspicion of arson. His motive is not currently known.

    10/24/2024 — Loxahatchee, Florida

    A group of people were campaigning for a Jewish local Democratic candidate outside a public library, which was an early voting site. Nicholas Farley, 30, allegedly drove around the site in a white van shouting antisemitic and racist slurs at the campaigners. Later, when questioned by deputies, Farley touted the name of a neo-Nazi website, continued to make racist and antisemitic remarks, and said he uses those slurs towards anyone who “commits crime and don’t support America and patriots like him,” the Palm Beach Post reported.

    10/24/2024 — San Antonio, Texas

    Jesse Lutzenberger, 63, allegedly repeatedly assaulted an elderly election worker at a polling place who repeatedly asked him to remove his MAGA hat. He’s since been charged with injury to an elderly person. One recurring flashpoint for violence appears to be state laws that bar voters from wearing political attire to polling places (21 states have such laws on the books).

    10/25/2024 — Lancaster County, Pennsylvania

    Election workers flagged more than 2,500 mail-in ballots as fraudulent. The ballots contained names of candidates from different political parties, and officials suspect that they were sent in as part of a coordinated operation to erode trust in the voting process. The incident is under investigation.

    10/26/2024 — Montgomery County, Pennsylvania

    GOP headquarters in Montgomery County received a bomb threat. State police are investigating.

    10/28/2024 — Vancouver, Washington & Portland, Oregon

    Ballot drop-boxes in Vancouver, Washington and Portland, Oregon, were set on fire using incendiary devices. A third, undetonated device was found by another drop-box in Vancouver. Investigators say that signs saying “Free Gaza” were discovered nearby, but cautioned that those shouldn’t necessarily be an indication of motive as the suspect could have left them to deflect blame towards leftists.

    10/28/2024 — Delaware County, Pennsylvania

    MAGA activist Val Biancaniello was taken into custody for disruptive and belligerent behavior that seemed intended to influence other voters while waiting in line at a polling place. Video of Biancaniello being arrested went viral, and the GOP are claiming that it’s evidence of “voter suppression” targeting Trump supporters.

    10/28/2024 — Redding, California

    A landlord was fired from his position after bragging in a post on Reddit that he was using ballots belonging to former tenants to cast additional votes for Trump. The local District Attorney told Action News Now that she’s weighing criminal charges.

    10/29/2024 — Neptune Beach, Florida

    Caleb James Williams, 18, showed up to an early voting location with a group of young men, holding a Trump sign and brandishing a machete towards a group of female Harris voters. He’s facing aggravated assault charges.

    10/30/2024 — Champaign, Illinois

    A fight at a polling place broke out when an election worker told a man in a Trump hat that he wasn’t allowed to wear political merchandise while voting. The man reportedly pulled out a camera and started recording the election worker, and then got into an altercation with another voter.

    10/30/2024 — Orangeburg, South Carolina

    A man wearing a “Let’s Go Brandon” hat was told he couldn’t vote at his polling place while wearing it. Video shows that he quickly became aggressive, a fight broke out, and he launched towards poll workers, mostly Black women. Some workers had to pin back his arms to prevent him from striking their colleagues.

    10/30/2024 — Westminster, Maryland

    An election leader successfully obtained a “peace order” against a local GOP official and activist who was reportedly harassing election workers during early voting.

    WIRED also noted several arrests for incidents that took place prior to our dataset’s timeframe (starting October 21). On October 21, the Justice Department’s Election Threats Task Force unsealed an indictment charging a Pennsylvania man who threatened a state political party representative who was recruiting poll watchers. The affiliation or identity of the party representative was not revealed in court documents, but investigators say that the suspect threatened to hunt and skin him alive.

    On October 29, Madison County authorities in Indiana arrested Larry L Savage Jr., 51, a former GOP candidate for U.S. Rep, for stealing several election ballots during a voting machine test, and then trying to spread disinformation online about the machines being faulty.

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