A federal task force investigating threats against election workers has found more than 1,000 reported cases of “hostile” contact between election officials and the public over the last year.
The Justice Department’s Election Threats Task Force, launched last year by the Biden administration, reported on Monday that of the 1,000 contacts “reported as hostile or harassing,” about 11% were threatening enough to meet the “threshold for a federal criminal investigation.” The task force also found that the majority of harassment cases occurred in states with tight races or disputed results.
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“The task force has charged four federal cases and joined another case that was charged prior to the establishment of the task force. There have also been multiple state prosecutions to date. The task force anticipates additional prosecutions in the near future,” a Justice Department statement said Monday.
The task force found that 58% of the total potentially criminal threats were in states that underwent 2020 post-election lawsuits, recounts, and audits, such as Arizona, Georgia, Colorado, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Wisconsin.
The vast majority of hostile or threatening interactions reported to the task force, 89% of cases, did “not include a threat of unlawful violence,” according to Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Polite Jr., who announced the task force’s initial findings during a virtual discussion with approximately 750 election officials and poll workers on Monday.
Some states have recently passed or are considering legislation protecting poll workers and election officials ahead of the 2022 midterm contests.
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The Oregon legislature passed a bill in March that allows election workers to keep their home addresses from public disclosure and makes harassment of an election worker a more serious crime, punishable by a maximum of 364 days in prison and a $6,250 fine.
The mayor of Madison, Wisconsin, has also recently proposed a ban on harassing election workers. The ordinance would make it a crime to “engage in violent, abusive, indecent, profane, boisterous, unreasonably loud or otherwise disorderly conduct under circumstances in which such conduct tends to cause or provoke a disturbance” against poll workers or local election managers.
