The new reality in the US elections

For two decades, her neighbors have trusted Cindy Elgan to lead elections in his little corner of Nevada. Now those same neighbors think she is part of a conspiracy to steal the presidency from Donald Trump.

It doesn’t matter that in 2020 the Republican obtained 82 percent of the votes cast in Esmeralda County, whose approximately 700 inhabitants make it one of the least populated in the country. USA.

“I don’t trust the results of the 2020 election,” said Mary Jane Zakas, a retired school teacher who supports an effort to unseat Elgan as county clerk.

The problem, Zakas said, echoing an oft-repeated theory among conservatives, is the use of voting machines instead of ballots.

“As Mike Lindell has pointed out, there are many ways to cheat,” he said, referring to the man whose outbursts about election integrity are frequently placed next to advertisements for the pillows he sells.

“There are mathematical formulas that can alter your vote. “There are things that can change it,” Zakas said.

Elgan knows by sight almost all of the 600 registered voters in Esmeralda, a stretch of desert where gold miners, including author Mark Twain, once sought their fortune.

In the past, he said, the community always seemed happy with the way elections were run.

But when Trump refused to accept his loss to Joe Biden in 2020, things turned ugly.

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“Some people are very passionate about this and I can’t blame them for being passionate about their country,” he told AFP at his Goldfield office.

“I may not agree with some of the things they do, say or don’t say, but I understand.”

“It is damaging the elections”

According to polls, more than a third of Americans have doubts about the integrity of the electoral system.

Claire Woodall, of the Issue One research institute, said there has long been an undercurrent of mistrust.

But Trump’s refusal to concede in 2020 calcified things.

“We really started to see questions, specifically of the administration of the elections,” he said.

Beyond the noise it creates nationally, the way this plays out in smaller communities like Goldfield can be insidious, he said, with threats, harassment and attacks forcing many election officials from their jobs.

Turnover among local election officials has been especially acute in states where presidential elections are typically close, such as Arizona, where Biden won by 0.3 percentage points in 2020, and Nevada, where the margin was 2.4 percentage points. according to a report by Issue. One.

Amy Burgans, who runs elections in Douglas County, home to 50,000 people in western Nevada, offered an example.

“I’ve only been in this position for four years, and yet I’m one of the highest-ranking secretaries in the state,” she said.

Burgans, a Republican, finds it frustrating that most of the misinformation about election integrity comes from her own party.

Lies and conspiracies are driving out honest officials, he said.

“We are losing the institutional knowledge of employees who have been doing this for years.

“It doesn’t help make elections more secure. “It is damaging the elections.”

Threats to election officials

AFP contacted several former Nevada election officials who declined to speak on the record.

“I don’t want to expose my family again,” said one of them.

A quarter of election officials reported experiencing abuse or threats between 2020 and 2022, according to a survey by the nonpartisan Voting and Election Information Center.

Burgans was one of them. He received death threats in 2022.

The growing tension has led to the adoption of previously unheard of security measures, such as bulletproof vests, surveillance cameras and even snipers posted on top of buildings near voting centers, said Tammy Patrick of the National Association of Election Officials.

In Los Angeles, election offices have partnered with authorities to have sniffer dogs inspect ballots that arrive by mail.

“In different places in the country… they have received mail with various substances. Some of them were fentanyl… one of them was methamphetamine,” Patrick said.

Burgans said she and her team now carry Narcan, an antidote to opioid poisoning, in case they receive a tainted ballot.

He now spends much of his working life explaining the voting process to the public and assuring them that it is safe.

“For the most part, I think people are willing to talk,” he said.

But some just can’t be convinced.

“No matter how much you try to tell them the facts,” Burgans said, “they still want to believe the misinformation they’ve been given.”