The county election worker was crossing the street with a locked bag full of ballots when he saw a Jeep Gladiator pickup truck come around the corner. It sped toward him and slammed on the brakes, skidding to a stop just past him. The driver glared.
"Then she leaned out of the car and looked at me and yelled, 'you f***ing traitor!'" he said.
The woman had been following him all day as he drove around collecting ballots from drop-boxes in Coos County, Ore. The man — whom we've agreed not to identify because he said he fears being further targeted — says she would get out and film him, and that she had a gun on her hip.
Things weren't much better over at the county elections office. Local people, apparently juiced up on misinformation related to Donald Trump's false claims about rigged elections, were camped in the hallway day after day.
"Some of them were very mean," says Dede Murphy, the county clerk during this past midterm election. One called her "a wicked woman." Another barked through a bullhorn, "you should be ashamed of yourself."
Even though Trump won 59% of the vote in this county in 2020, Murphy and the other election workers say two years later people were still yelling in their faces about voter fraud.
Wesley Lapointe for NPR
Some of it seemed ridiculous, but other times it was scary.
Officials set up metal detectors at the entrance to the building, and over about a month, a security guard stopped people from bringing in a total of 20 guns and 60 knives or other weapons.
The worker collecting ballots called 911 four times the day he says he was menaced by the woman in the Jeep.
"I have had somebody following me," he tells a police dispatcher in one call. "She tried to run me off the road."
The roads in this rural Oregon county wind through steep wooded hillsides, logging trucks hurtle past in the other direction. He says the woman tailgated on his bumper, driving erratically, sometimes swerving into the oncoming traffic lane next to him.
"I was terrified," he says. "I was worried that I might not make it off that road."
As the country heads into the next election, NPR obtained contact information for thousands of local election workers and reached out to them. Workers and officials across 22 different states responded and told NPR they've received threats, felt unsafe doing their jobs, feared for the safety of their families, or even their pets.
Their stories show that more than two years after the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, not only is Trump's lie that he won the election alive and well in a large chunk of the Republican Party, but the misinformation about voter fraud is endangering the people whose job it is to conduct elections.
"I actually bring a weapon with me every day to work," says Nancy Boren, the director of elections in Columbus, Ga. "We also have security here at this building who, it sounds even crazy to say this, but, walks me to and from my car."
NPR spoke to many election workers who didn't want to use their names for fear of further harassment or threats.
"We have a lot of, you know, just general 'f*** you's, you're trying to rig the election... you oughta be ashamed of yourself,'" says one worker in Georgia.
"They said that they were coming for my family and somebody would have to pay for this," says an official in Virginia.
A looming sense of menace
When threats are made, often they're vague and just add to a looming sense of menace. But sometimes they're more direct.
"The threat was very specific with my name and my home address, and that I had four children and that all four of my children should be killed," says Thomas Liddy, an official with Maricopa County in Arizona who was threatened this past November. The FBI tracked down and arrested the person, who pleaded guilty to a criminal charge and is awaiting a sentence of up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Another official in a southern state tells NPR she too was targeted during last year's midterms. "The threat was specifically that the following week I would not be alive, my home address was made public online, and then my dog was poisoned." The official says the dog survived, barely.
There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud. Following the 2020 election, more than 60 lawsuits brought by Trump and his allies were all thrown out of court.
The election officials being targeted say they're just trying to do their jobs. They're Republicans, Democrats and independents — everyone from top state officials to lower-level county workers who handle ballots or even senior citizen volunteers.
2024 could be worse
"Election officials have been under siege," says David Becker, executive director of the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation and Research. "They've been threatened, abused and harassed for nearly three years now and it's getting worse."
The Department of Homeland Security issued a bulletin in May warning that perceptions of the next presidential race could mobilize individuals to commit violence.
Many election officials say they need more resources to pay for better security and to do outreach to fight misinformation. Some election workers tell NPR they are scared by the threats and harassment and consider quitting their jobs. Others say it hardens their resolve to do the important work of running free and fair elections.
Other recent research backs up what NPR found. A survey from the nonprofit Brennan Center found nearly one in three election workers say they've had to deal with harassment, abuse or threats. And almost half worry about the safety of their colleagues in future elections.
"I am very nervous about next year... the presidential year," says one of the election workers in Coos County. She and her husband, the worker who says he was chased in his car, both work in the local elections office. And they've been dealing with all this while having their first baby. She was nine months pregnant this past midterm election.
"During that time I was scared every time I came into work, being at work, leaving," she says. "And I didn't get to feel safe at home either."
She says the couple was followed home from work. People knocked on their neighbors' doors asking questions about them. They even went through the couple's garbage.
It was a relentless mix of ridiculousness along with things that were more frightening, such as violent-sounding posts on social media, election workers told NPR.
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