Preparing for the worst: Election workers expect threats to the US vote | 2024 US Election News

Across the country, in Rochester Hills, Michigan, Tina Barton had election-related violence.

For more than three decades, Barton, a Republican, worked in government, eventually holding the role of city clerk. That office required him to administer elections and maintain voter files, among other duties.

But as the years went by, he could see the tension growing. There were the first signs of disagreement in the 2000 election between Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W Bush, a race decided by a few thousand votes in Florida.

Barton also noticed the denial of the election years later, in 2016. Meanwhile, Green Party candidate Jill Stein pursued a long-run recount in three battleground states, including Michigan, after she finished fourth in the presidential race.

As that effort intensified, Stein lamented, “We don’t have a voting system that we can trust.”

In Georgia, Democrat Stacey Abrams was also defiant after her 2018 loss to Brian Kemp, accusing Republicans of “rigging” the system in their favor, though she admitted they were acting within the rules that existed at the time.

But those nascent signs of growing skepticism turned into something different following the 2020 vote, Barton said.

“Until then, the attacks were mainly focused on the system and doubts about the process and how we conduct elections in our country,” he told Al Jazeera. “Of course we haven’t paid attention to each person.”

For Barton, that new focus on election workers has come with threats.

After Trump’s defeat in 2020, much of the scrutiny fell on the battlegrounds where Republicans narrowly lost, including Michigan.

Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel called Barton out by name when he falsely claimed that 2,000 votes were improperly transferred to Democrat Joe Biden.

In fact, Barton and his team discovered a clerical error in the vote tallies, which he corrected to ensure accurate results as part of normal election procedures.

But the damage was done. Hearing Barton’s name illegally linked to election fraud sparked attacks and threats. One caller — citing Trump’s false claims about the election — even left death threats on his voicemail in the days after the race.

“I didn’t expect to go to my office to pick up my phone, my voicemail, and have someone call me and say: ‘If you don’t wait, we’re going to kill you,'” Barton said.

Barton lost his race for city clerk that year and has focused on training other election officials. But he has a message for powerful political figures.

“When you’re a person with a platform and a following … you have to be accountable for what you say,” Barton said.

Members of the public, he stressed, “may take those words as orders to take action”.