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Tag: voting

  • Election Deniers Got What They Wanted. They’re Still Going

    Election Deniers Got What They Wanted. They’re Still Going

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    A week after the election, the Election Integrity Network, a well-funded group that has been at the forefront of the election denial movement, hosted a meeting to discuss next steps. It was attended by almost 200 members.

    “The red wave came in on very slim margins, so it is very important that we keep in mind during our celebratory times, that we have a lot more work to do,” Kerri Toloczko, the executive director of the group, said during the meeting, according to a recording reviewed by WIRED. She then added that the group needs to focus on elections in the future, including the 2026 midterms, while warning about vague election fraud conspiracies.

    “Obviously, we’re not going away,” said Toloczko. “We have new elections coming up. Virginia has one every year. We’ve got the midterms. New elections [mean] new games. We don’t know what they’re playing at yet, but I guarantee you they’ll be playing at something. So we need to figure out what that is.”

    The group’s founder, former Trump adviser Cleta Mitchell, continued to push the baseless claim that a flood of illegal immigrants were voting in US elections, when that figure has been shown to be vanishingly small. She said the group “had a lot of work to do” on the issue and she “hoped the incoming administration will take it seriously.”

    While Mitchell and Election Integrity Network haven’t stopped, some groups in the election denial movement are pausing to reassess and see what’s next for them.

    Catherine Engelbrecht, the cofounder of True the Vote, one of the most prominent election denial groups that has organized drop box monitoring and large-scale voter challenges, said last week that she was going on “a brief hiatus.”

    “Our focus is shifting toward supporting grassroots organizations in building local influence and advocating for common-sense reforms,” Engelbrecht wrote in her channel on the fringe platform Locals.

    For Lindell, who approaches election denial with the fervor of a religious zealot, the idea of stopping now is not something that has ever crossed his mind, even if his efforts have left him with no money and huge legal bills.

    “I have to [keep going], or we lose our country,” says Lindell, adding that if he has to borrow money to continue funding his efforts, he will. “I wouldn’t trust any election done with computers ever. I will never stop until we get the paper ballot, hands counted.”

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  • The Conspiracy Theory That Elon Musk Stole the Election Using Starlink Is Everywhere Now

    The Conspiracy Theory That Elon Musk Stole the Election Using Starlink Is Everywhere Now

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    Starlink did not respond to a request for comment.

    This conspiracy theory has continued to spread, and it’s not limited to X: Discussion threads on Reddit, posts on Instagram and Threads, and dozens of Facebook posts all push the narrative that Musk colluded with Trump to use his Starlink satellites to steal the election.

    One of the most active platforms for these conspiracy theories is TikTok. WIRED has reviewed dozens of videos posted on the platform by users either repeating the claim about Musk and Starlink or adding new twists to the conspiracy theory.

    X, Meta, Reddit, and TikTok did not respond to requests for comment.

    One of the most popular new aspects of the theory relates to the fact that Starlink satellites were observed burning up over the US last weekend, which those pushing the conspiracy theory claim is evidence of Musk attempting to cover his tracks. The reality is that Starlink satellites are designed to burn up on reentry at the end of their lifespan.

    The conspiracy theory has eerily similar aspects to the so-called Italygate conspiracy pushed by the Trump campaign after the 2020 election, which suggested an Italian military satellite was used to flip votes from Trump to President Joe Biden.

    “It’s concerning to see it solidifying and crystallizing into specific narratives, and then to see stuff being added on—this is what we saw last time as well,” says Thomas. “You see this sort of collective storytelling that happens within these communities where the people who are trying to gain clout online by promoting a new version of a conspiracy theory, they all have to add their little bits to it so that they can get their engagement.”

    Other conspiracy theorists claimed Trump spoke about “a little secret” he made onstage that he had with Musk, referencing a comment he made during his Madison Square Garden rally last month. In fact, the comment was directed at House speaker Mike Johnson. Some left-leaning accounts have also pointed to podcaster Joe Rogan’s comments this week that Musk had developed a bespoke app to give him early access to election results.

    “Apparently Elon created an app and he knew who won the election four hours before the results,” Rogan said. “So as the results are coming in, four hours before they called it, Dana White told me Elon said, ‘I’m leaving. It’s over. Donald won.’” It’s unclear how this app worked or what data it used.

    Jen Easterly, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency that oversees the US elections, said in a November 6 statement that there was “no evidence of any malicious activity that had a material impact on the security or integrity of our election infrastructure.”

    While some right-wing figures are continuing to push election conspiracy theories, the vast majority have fallen silent in the wake of Trump’s win, abandoning overnight four years worth of nonstop posting and shouting about election fraud.

    And while the left-wing election conspiracies are nowhere near the scale that the Stop the Steal movement was just weeks ago, some experts are still concerned.

    “I’ve seen some comparisons to Stop the Steal and some of these other right-wing conspiracy election theories, and it is smaller than those, as they were at the end of the Trump presidency,” says Thomas. “But I think the significant difference there is that they came after months, if not years, of deliberate agitation and cultivation by a variety of actors. So, for me, to see these left-wing election fraud conspiracy theories getting pretty significant traction quickly, I think, personally, is quite concerning.”

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  • Election Denial Conspiracy Theories Are Exploding on X. This Time They’re Coming From the Left

    Election Denial Conspiracy Theories Are Exploding on X. This Time They’re Coming From the Left

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    While at publication time the Associated Press’ vote count was indeed 16 million votes lower than that for the 2020 election, the explanation is trivially simple: The entirety of the vote hasn’t been tabulated yet.

    “Election denial is anti-democratic, whether it comes from the left or the right,” David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research, wrote on X. “No, 20 million votes aren’t missing. Votes are still being counted in many states, including millions in CA alone. Number of votes in 2024 very close to 2020, when all are reported “

    Posts relating to these conspiracy theories began to gain traction around 2:00 am Eastern, PeakMetrics data shows, which coincides roughly with the time the election was called for Trump—but even as Americans went to bed, the number of posts did not decline.

    “By 8am ET, the number of posts per hour had surged to 31,991,” PeakMetrics wrote in an analysis shared with WIRED. “There was perhaps a surprising lack of overnight drop-off in posts from 2am-7am ET—when typically posts would decline as the US hits sleeping hours. The steady increase in posts on the Kamala recount/missing votes narrative throughout the overnight hours may simply reflect the intensity of this discussion—or may point to inauthentic or automated posting behavior.”

    Unlike the election denial movement in 2020, which was inspired by Trump’s refusal to accept the results, these conspiracy theories haven’t received any support from the candidate. On Wednesday, Harris urged her supporters to accept the results and assured them her team “will engage in a peaceful transfer of power.”

    The phenomenon of left-leaning or anti-Trump accounts posting conspiracy theories on social media platforms, referred to as BlueAnon, came to prominence earlier this year in the wake of the assassination attempt on Trump’s life in July.

    “Any event that seems improbable will always invite conspiracy theories about what ‘really’ happened,” says Mike Rothschild, an author who writes about conspiracy theories and extremists. “In this case, it’s a factually incorrect narrative that there are tens of millions of missing votes, and that Russian bomb threats sabotaged the Harris campaign. Neither are true—turnout appears to be down, and many states, including California, are still well into counting. And while bomb threats are never acceptable, they’re not the reason why the Harris campaign lost every swing state. To write Trump’s win off to conspiracy theories is to not live in reality.”

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  • Groypers Gave Illegal Hot Dogs and Burgers to Trump Voters

    Groypers Gave Illegal Hot Dogs and Burgers to Trump Voters

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    Mesa, AZ — A group of America First groypers, college Republicans, and a Christian nationalist pastor were handing out burgers and hot dogs to voters in Phoenix on Tuesday—but only if they voted for former president Donald Trump.

    The cookout took place about 100 yards from a polling station—and it was likely illegal.

    The effort was organized by the far-right College Republicans United group, in association with the Patriot Party of Arizona. It began just after polls opened at the Mesa Convention Center. Groypers, the name that followers of white nationalist Nick Fuentes give themselves, were helping hand out hot dogs, burgers, and cold drinks. Manning the grill was Pastor David MacLellan, a Christian nationalist pastor who is the chaplain for the Patriot Party of Arizona and subscribes to the extremist ideology of the Black Robe Regiment.

    “We’re giving away hot dogs and hamburgers to folks who are doing the right thing, voting for Trump,” MacLellan tells WIRED.

    Isaiah, a self-identified groyper who would not provide his last name, confirmed that the group was only giving out food to Trump voters, but added: “[The food is] specifically for Trump voters, but we do welcome others if they do want to come over and change their mind.”

    Providing food for a specific group of people at a polling location is in breach of federal law.

    “Not only is it illegal to give just to voters for one candidate, one cannot limit it only to voters. it must be made available to all people in the area, including children and others ineligible to vote, to avoid running afoul of federal law against vote buying,” Rick Hasen, a law professor at UCLA, tells WIRED, citing the same rules that Elon Musk was accused of breaching with his $1 million ballot.

    The Arizona Secretary of State’s office, which sets the rules for behavior at polling locations, did not respond to a request for comment.

    The College Republican United group was set up in 2018 by Rick Thomas, who is also a member of the Patriot Party of Arizona. Thomas told WIRED he founded the group out of frustration at the Republican student group that was in place at Arizona State University.

    “We eventually broke off and formed our own organization that was very pro-Trump,” Thomas said. “We are American first, we are MAGA.”

    While not all members of College Republican United are members of Fuentes’ group, there is a significant overlap, Isaiah told WIRED.

    Thomas portrayed the group as a relatively mainstream student group, but evidence online indicates otherwise: The College Republican United’s website’s book recommendations page features two deeply antisemitic works: the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Henry Ford’s The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem.

    Another member of the CRU, Kevin Decuyper, was recently hired as an aide to former far-right sheriff Joe Arpaio,

    “There are reasons why College Republicans United have been denounced by so many GOP organizations,” says Nick Martin, an investigative journalist who closely tracks extremist groups in Arizona and who runs the online publication The Informant. “The organization recommends its members read discredited and debunked books filled with racist pseudoscience and conspiracy theories. Their guest speakers have included white nationalists, neo-Nazis, Pizzagate peddlers, fringe political candidates and, rarely, some actual Republicans.”

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

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  • An Election Denial Group Has Spent Months Compiling ‘Suspicious Voter’ Lists in North Carolina

    An Election Denial Group Has Spent Months Compiling ‘Suspicious Voter’ Lists in North Carolina

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    In response to a request for comment, Richards tells WIRED that EagleAI Network “has no relationships with entities” and, rather, “is used by individuals.”

    “We do not ask people whether they work with groups,” Richards says.

    The NCEIT is affiliated with the nationwide Election Integrity Network (EIN), whose members allege without evidence that the US is plagued with voter fraud. The EIN was created by Cleta Mitchell, Donald Trump’s former lawyer who was present on the 2020 phone call in which Trump asked the Georgia secretary of state to “find” him nearly 12,000 votes.

    When EagleAI Network was created in the wake of the 2020 election, it reportedly received legal assistance and strategy advice from Mitchell—though Richards has insisted that Mitchell has no “official relationship” with EagleAI Network. The company has courted contracts with public election boards in at least three states (Georgia, Texas, and West Virginia), and it has data about voters that have recently moved from at least nine states (Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Texas), but the total number of states EagleAI Network has been used in is unclear. Notably, North Carolina is absent from both publicly available lists.

    The NCEIT’s campaign to target “suspicious voters” could disproportionately impact Hispanic people. Jim Womack, NCEIT founder and president and Lee County Republican Party chair, said in a recent video obtained by CBS News that when generating suspicious voter lists, NCEIT members should target people with “Hispanic-sounding” last names.

    “If you’ve got folks that you, that were registered, and they’re missing information … and they were registered in the last 90 days before the election, and they’ve got Hispanic-sounding last names, that probably is, is a suspicious voter,” Womack says in the video. “It doesn’t mean they’re illegal. It just means they’re suspicious.”

    The emails don’t detail exactly how the “suspicious voter” tool from EagleAI Network works. However, the company’s tool for automating voter registration challenges, a similar process, is well documented. While voter registration challenges have to be filed no fewer than 90 days before an election, voter challenges can be filed up to five days after an election in North Carolina.

    EagleAI Network’s tool for filing voter registration challenges essentially centralizes the process. It allows users to search for people who they suspect have issues or mistakes in their voter registrations, using data from a combination of public and private sources. A search could surface voters who, say, live at a particular address, or share demographics like age.

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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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  • 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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  • Stacey Abrams Has Some Ideas on How to Stop Elon Musk and the Far Right in Georgia

    Stacey Abrams Has Some Ideas on How to Stop Elon Musk and the Far Right in Georgia

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    Leah Feiger: I absolutely hear that. Obviously though, this is a different environment, right? We have experienced a fracturing of media and social platforms that we have never seen before.

    Stacey Abrams: Absolutely.

    Leah Feiger: In many ways, to me, it feels like tech platforms have abdicated responsibility in this election cycle.

    Stacey Abrams: Yes, absolutely.

    Leah Feiger: Elon Musk doesn’t just own X. He’s actually been using it to spread election conspiracies, and letting other major influencers do the same. How does the Harris campaign deal with that, and what do you make of the role that Musk has played in this election?

    Stacey Abrams: So, the podcast I do called Assembly Required, we had Esosa Osa on to talk about disinformation. The reason this matters is that it’s not just Elon Musk. It’s that Meta and other platforms have weakened their filters. So, Elon Musk has been aggressively and intentionally a disinformation factory.

    Leah Feiger: Machine, truly incredible to watch.

    Stacey Abrams: He is becoming his own industry of life. So, he deserves his own specific place in ignominy.

    Leah Feiger: Fair.

    Stacey Abrams: Let’s put it that way. We should be angry. We should be concerned, but we should also be aware that while he is the loudest version of this terrible dark star, he’s not alone. So, to your point, our obligation is to hold all of these tech platforms accountable. You should not be permitted to weaken the protection that you owe the people. If you are going to hold yourself out as a purveyor of information, you are obligated to ensure that that information at least meet the basic smell test. Unfortunately, we have seen multiple tech platforms abdicate that responsibility. So, while I am more than happy to castigate and hold Elon Musk particularly accountable for taking terrible and making it worse, we also have the responsibility on the other side of this election to evaluate everyone who was willing to take this Wild West situation, and make it worse.

    Leah Feiger: I mean, absolutely. Yesterday, we came out with a big article about how militias are organizing on Facebook, and you know what? Facebook is actually auto generating pages for militias. It’s messy to say the least. Obviously with the Musk thing, he comes with the benefit of just an absolute ton of cash. That has been also wild to watch about his cash for registration sweepstakes. There’s just a lot happening there that I am constantly wondering, “Is the Harris campaign doing enough to counteract, and can they?”

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  • ‘We’re a Fortress Now’: The Militarization of US Elections Is Here

    ‘We’re a Fortress Now’: The Militarization of US Elections Is Here

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    Drones, snipers, razor wire, sniffer dogs, body armor, bulletproof glass, and 24-hour armed security.

    This is not a list of protections in place for a visit by the president of the United States nor the contents of a shipment to frontline troops fighting in Ukraine. This is a list of the security measures election officials in counties across the US have had to implement ahead of Tuesday’s vote as a result of the unprecedented threats they have faced in recent years.

    Officials are putting in place the typical final measures to ensure the smooth operation of an election, but beyond checking that they have enough ballots and that machines are working properly, officials are now faced with having to monitor for threats and make sure they have done everything they can to protect themselves and their staff.

    “Given the current political environment, the possibility that an event may occur has increased and our election professionals have responded in kind,” says Tammy Patrick, a former election official in Arizona’s Maricopa County who’s now a senior advisor at the nonprofit Bolstering Elections Initiative. “Efforts focusing on the physical security of the voters, election workers, and staff by putting in bulletproof glass, panic buttons, razor wire and fencing are fairly common, as is the installation of surveillance cameras and systems, cyber protections, and training on de-escalation techniques and response drills.”

    Nowhere in the US is the militarization of the election process more evident than in Maricopa County.

    The county, which is the fourth largest county in the nation, became ground zero for election denial conspiracists in recent years, after GOP lawmakers sanctioned a bogus recount in 2021, run by the Florida company Cyber Ninjas.

    As a result, Maricopa has for years been putting increased security measures in place. “We’re a fortress now,” Stephen Richer, the Maricopa County Recorder, told WIRED back in February, outlining how he had to navigate security fencing, metal detectors, and security checks in order to get into his office.

    As the 2024 election approaches, the measures Maricopa officials are putting in place have been ratcheted up significantly.

    Officials have now added a second layer of security fencing to protect election offices as well as concrete k-rails, which means election workers will be bussed in from off-site locations due to reduced parking spaces. At the country’s tabulation center, every door will be fitted with metal detectors, floodlights will be installed, and on election day, the center will be protected by a ring of snipers deployed on roofs around the building, election officials told NBC.

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  • US Intel Says Insider Threats Are ‘Likely’ During the Election

    US Intel Says Insider Threats Are ‘Likely’ During the Election

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    Insider threats will “likely be an issue” that election centers across the US will face in the coming weeks, according to a US intelligence memo viewed by WIRED. These threats, the memo warns, “could derail or jeopardize a fair and transparent election process.”

    The bulletin cites the Department of Homeland Security’s definition of an insider threat: someone who “will use his or her authorized access, wittingly or unwittingly, to do harm to an entity.”

    This stark warning was rolled into a situational awareness bulletin on the broader threat landscape faced by election centers heading into the 2024 election. It was published this month by Colorado Information Analysis Center (CIAC), Colorado’s counterterrorism center, which compiles intelligence from federal, state, and local agencies into threat reports shared with its law enforcement partners. This warning comes as election deniers across the US have assumed positions at all levels of the electoral system.

    “The entire threat picture is elevated for this election,” Colorado’s Division of Homeland Security and Emergencies Management director Kevin Klein tells WIRED. “I think it’s fair to say that insider threats are a greater concern than in previous elections.”

    “Due to the nature of the United States election process, many people are involved in administering or carrying out responsibilities that support elections, all of whom have a potential to be an insider threat,” states the bulletin, which was first obtained by Property of the People, a nonprofit focused on transparency and national security.

    The intelligence bulletin outlines several examples of insider threat “red flag” behavior, including attempts to alter or destroy ballots, giving unauthorized personnel access to voting centers, accessing the computer network at odd hours, and turning off security cameras.

    The bulletin doesn’t say why intelligence officials concluded that insider threats were likely this election. But since 2020, there has been a frenzied effort by election conspiracy theorists to install MAGA loyalists and election deniers as workers at all levels of the electoral process.

    Countless conspiracy-fueled “election integrity” outfits have sprung up in recent years. Initially, most were focused on training Donald Trump loyalists as “poll watchers”—civilians who observe the democratic process and flag any concerns. Their ambitions have since broadened to include “poll workers,” seeking to install election deniers in positions responsible for administering the election in counties and cities around the US.

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