‘It’s absolutely getting worse’: Secretaries of state targeted by

On Oct 26, 2021

Or there’s the man who spit, “Die you bitch, die! Die you bitch, die!” repeatedly into the phone, in another of several dozen threatening and angry voicemails directed at the Democratic secretary of state and shared exclusively with CNN by her office.

Law enforcement has never had to think much about protecting secretaries of state, let alone allocating hundreds of thousands of dollars in security, tracking and follow-up. Their jobs used to be mundane, unexciting, bureaucratic. These are small offices in a handful of states with enormous power in administering elections, from mailing ballots to overseeing voting machines to keeping track of counted votes.

Staff members in the offices say they’re dealing with long-term emotional and psychological trauma after a year of constant threats — in person and virtually — to the secretaries and to themselves.

Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs has received threatening and agry voicemails.

“Bullet,” read one tweet reply to Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat, in September. “That is a six letter word for you.”

An email sent to her office over the summer read: “I’m really jonzing to see your purple face after you’ve been hanged.”

Asked by CNN last week if she feels safe in her job and going about her days, Griswold paused for nearly 30 seconds before answering.

“I take these threats very seriously,” she finally said, choosing her words carefully. “It’s absolutely getting worse,” she added.

The threats come in from their home states and across the country. Few appear to be coordinated or organized, and are instead often driven by momentary, angry reactions to a news story or social media post. But some get very specific, citing details and specifics that leave the secretaries and their staff rushing to report them to authorities.

Most anticipate the threats will increase going into next year, with Republicans around the country making election doubt conspiracies a central plank of their campaigns, and with many of these secretaries of state up for reelection themselves in races that are already generating more attention than ever before, with expectations that they will be the frontlines of potentially trying to overturn the next presidential election.

But Griswold’s problem was, ironically, summed up in one of the tweets her office has tracked: “Your security detail is far too thin and incompetent to protect you. This world is unpredictable these days… anything can happen to anyone.” It ended with a shrug emoji. Griswold’s vulnerability is greater than that person imagined: for now, she’s had to contract private security, and only for official events, squeezing the money out of her small office budget. With all that’s been coming at her, that’s what she has.

Little protection

Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, who says the threats are getting worse, has asked for more protection.

Griswold told Gov. Jared Polis, a fellow Democrat, she needs more protection. But so far, the state has not allocated resources for it. State police protected Griswold for two weeks, then stopped, and shelved an investigation into the threats. The governor’s office and the state police did not…