Election officials facing armed militia presence at some polls

A pair of armed and masked men in tactical gear stood guard at ballot drop boxes in Mesa, Ariz., on Oct. 21 as people began early voting for the 2022 midterm elections.

They belonged to an election monitoring group called Clean Elections USA, which has echoed former President Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. The group says it’s watching early voting in select counties for signs of fraud. But its presence caused unease among Maricopa County voters, who saw these “drop box watchers” as a blatant attempt at voter intimidation.

“Uninformed vigilantes outside Maricopa County’s drop boxes are not increasing election integrity. Instead they are leading to voter intimidation complaints,” Maricopa County election officials Bill Gates and Stephen Richer said in a joint statement the next day.

A U.S. District Court judge appointed by Trump, Michael Liburdi, ordered members of Clean Elections USA to stay at least 75 feet away from drop boxes and not to follow or speak to voters. They were also told they couldn’t openly carry weapons. The ruling was in response to a temporary restraining order filed by two voter advocacy groups, alleging the poll watchers were trying to “bully and intimidate lawful Arizona voters.”

“We are deeply concerned about the safety of individuals who are exercising their constitutional right to vote and who are lawfully taking their early ballot to a drop box,” Gates and Richer said.

While Arizona has seen a host of voter-intimidation reports, the state is certainly not alone. Fears about voter intimidation and suppression have been brewing nationwide since the 2020 presidential election, when Trump refused to accept his loss and accused several states of voter fraud.

The rising rhetoric has tensions running high going into Tuesday’s midterms. Two in five U.S. voters said they were worried about threats of violence or voter intimidation at the polls, according to a new Reuters/Ipso poll.

The same disinformation about election fraud that fueled the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot is the same disinformation that’s “threatening political violence related to our elections,” Mary McCord, the executive director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection and former federal prosecutor, said in an interview on PBS Newshour: