Pistols, a Hearse and Trucks Playing Chicken: Why Some Voters Felt Harassed and Intimidated at the Polls – By Adriana Gallardo, Maryam Jameel and Ryan McCarthy (ProPublica) / Dec 4 2020
Across the country, people complained about threats, aggressive electioneering and racist language both at early voting locations and on Election Day. We’ve corroborated some of those accounts.
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While the 2020 election went more smoothly than most had dared to hope, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a nonpartisan election protection group, nonetheless received a steady drumbeat of complaints to its hotline about voter intimidation and harassment during early voting and on Election Day.
The reports described threats, overly aggressive electioneering, racist language and more. They came from states across the country, including those where the outcome was decided by relatively small numbers of votes.
Since Nov. 3, ProPublica has followed up on these reports, attempting to verify details with complainants and other witnesses and to review available documentation, including videos, social media posts and police records. In many cases, no one would go on the record or what happened could not be substantiated or did not rise to the level of intimidation. But we were able to confirm several of the incidents.
It is impossible to know how much intimidation and harassment affected voting this year; the record turnout suggests it was outweighed in most cases by voters’ determination to be heard. Even so, the cases we examined show that the issue remains all too real, and they reflect a deep political polarization that will long outlast the 2020 presidential contest.
