As election nears, Michigan, other states confront intimidation of clerks

Editor’s Note: This story contains graphic language from threatening voicemails and emails sent to election officials across the U.S.

ROCHESTER HILLS – Exactly seven days had passed since the 2020 presidential election when Tina Barton sat down at her desk and saw the blinking light on her office phone.

It had already been a week from hell for the city clerk of Rochester Hills. Her office was responsible for administering an election that had grown increasingly contested, especially in her home state of Michigan. At one point, she’d worked for 36 hours straight.

She picked up the phone and hit the flashing button. A voice rang out that she would never forget.

“We will f***ing take you out,” a man said on her voicemail. “F**k your family, f**k your life, and you deserve the f***ing throat to the knife. … Watch your f***ing back.”

She listened again. She’d heard correctly. The man parroted then-President Donald Trump’s false claims that the election had been stolen, savaging Barton, a Republican, for her role in the “fraudulent” outcome.

Barton saved the message, called in a co-worker and filed a police report.

She immediately feared for herself, her husband and her children. Did the man know where she lived? Barton called friends in the military and asked them to identify vulnerabilities at her home. She asked neighbors to be on the lookout for anything suspicious, and she began screening phone calls.

She had cameras and floodlights installed at her home and took different routes to and from work, scared of being followed. She described herself as living in a state of “hypervigilance.”

“Anytime someone feels they have either been threatened, harassed or abused in a way that impacts their mental and physical well-being, that, to me, is violence,” says Barton, who has since left her role as an elections official to train those who may face similar situations. “Whether they ever lay a hand on them or not, it is impacting them in a way that can be life-changing.”

Over those few weeks after the 2020 presidential election, the lives of election workers fundamentally changed. Theirs once was a quiet, mostly anonymous job tending to the machinery behind American democracy. Suddenly, they became the targets of angry mobs fueled by misinformation.

An administrator in Georgia got a death threat with a picture of his face in crosshairs and a photo of his front yard. Another, in Arizona, ate Thanksgiving dinner with his family while armed guards protected his house. Official after official received menacing messages over social media, in emails and voicemails, and even in person.

Those threats weren’t isolated to the 2020 election. As Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake fell in step with Trump and refused to accept the results of the 2022 election, that state became a hotbed for threats. More than one-third of the 20 cases prosecuted by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Election Threats Task Force stem from threats against Arizona officials.

The threats – poised to intensify in a political climate that’s growing increasingly violent – represent a generational challenge for the administration of American elections.

According to a study published in May by the Brennan Center for Justice, 54% of election workers fear for their or their colleagues’ safety. Another 34% say they know of someone in the field who quit over these concerns.

Those who stay worry about what might happen should they leave. They know their experience will be needed in November and in elections to come, but they dread what’s ahead.

“Depending on how it turns out, our state of democracy could fall over the edge, or it could veer back over onto the plateau,” says Rosanne Rickabaugh, deputy director of elections in Defiance County, Ohio. “I think it’s on a precipice right now.”

To shore up democracy’s defenses, many election offices are increasing security this presidential cycle. In Shasta County, California, officials erected ceiling-high security fences to protect workers from angry election deniers. At the Defiance County Board of Elections, panic buttons were installed.

In California, a coalition of 11 counties is pooling funds to provide voter outreach and education in an effort to be more transparent with those who question the system.

Law enforcement officials nationwide are beginning to recognize that elections, once an afterthought, must become a major focus. In Maricopa County, Arizona, the new sheriff has made the security of elections and workers a top priority. Election and police officials from Georgia to Ohio and beyond are conducting joint training to prepare for violence.

Other states have responded with legislative action. In the past two years, some 60 bills have been introduced in 40 states to either increase protections for poll workers and election officials or bolster the penalties for those who threaten them. About half of those bills have become law.

But some states, such as Georgia, Tennessee and Texas, have made the electoral process even more difficult. Citing concerns about fraudulent voting and election interference, Republican leaders instituted laws making it harder for citizens to vote or for election workers to count ballots.

All of these dizzying changes are keeping election administrators on their toes as they race to keep up with a rapidly changing environment where democratic processes are criticized rather than celebrated.

Says Tate Fall, director of elections in Cobb County, Georgia: “When half of the country doesn’t believe in the foundation of our democracy, I don’t know what’s next.”

‘What do they need to know?’

For six years, including 2020, Chris Harvey oversaw elections for the state of Georgia. A former homicide detective and chief investigator for the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office, he never expected to be threatened after leaving a career in law enforcement.

Then an email arrived in his personal inbox the day before the 2021 runoff election for U.S. Senate.

“Chris Harvey, your days are numbered. The FBI can’t save you,” it read. “Every time you leave your house in the morning, make sure to say goodbye to your family, as you may not see them again.”

Accompanying it were pictures of Harvey in a rifle’s crosshairs and of the front of his home.

“I’m surprised I didn’t just reply back to the email and ask him, ‘Hey, just tell me where to show up; I’ll make it easy for you guys.’” Harvey recalls. “I was that worn out – just exhausted.”

Six months later, Harvey left the job to become deputy director of the Georgia Peace Officer Standards and Training Council, which establishes and enforces training standards for the state’s 50,000-plus law officers.

He immediately zeroed in on one section of state code: Title 21, covering election laws – or, as he describes it, “no code that any police officer ever reads in their life.”

“I thought: What’s going to happen if these tensions increase and if we start having more encounters at polling places?” he says. “People are going to call 911. A deputy or police officers are going to show up, (and) they’re not going to have any idea what the law is.”

So he created pocket cards with basic information about election law and developed a one-hour training about the ins and outs of federal, state and local elections and how to deal with civil rights issues at polling places.

“I basically just sat down at my desk and opened up PowerPoint and said, ‘What do they need to know?’” he says.

In June, that training became mandatory for all Georgia law enforcement officers.

“Nobody believes – least of all me – that one out of 800 hours is going to be the most memorable thing that any police officer learned in the police academy,” Harvey says. “It’s just going to plant that seed that we do have some responsibility for elections.”

His is among numerous efforts nationwide, in communities big and small, to increase security and safeguard one of the most fundamental elements of democracy.

Election officials and law enforcement came together in 2022 to create the Committee for Safe and Secure Elections, a bipartisan organization with the goal of protecting election officials and fostering relationships between officials and officers to better respond to threats.

The committee facilitates exercises between local election officials and law enforcement, partnering with federal agencies such as the FBI. Participants role-play emergency scenarios, such as a suspicious substance arriving in the mail, and brainstorm how to respond.

Tina Barton now serves as vice chair of the committee, and she often shares her personal story – and the voicemail she received – to drive home the ramifications of these actions.

“This is your wife or this is your daughter getting this phone call – that’s what I want you to picture in this moment,” she tells trainees. “I want that to evoke emotion in you to understand where the election officials in this country are finding themselves right now.”

Tate Fall entered the role of elections director in Cobb County, Georgia, less than a year ago and has focused on ensuring her workers feel safe. During a June meeting of polling place managers, Fall made an impromptu appearance and was immediately peppered with questions about safety.

One attendee said: “The discussion came up earlier about the security we might have in the upcoming election. … Can you give us an update?”

Fall previewed plans for a meeting with police, fire and emergency operations officials to talk through different scenarios and appropriate responses, and she said an armed officer would be stationed at the Cobb County elections office this fall.

She promised to develop a security plan for monitoring polling places, aiming for every location to have some kind of law enforcement coverage. That’s not funded in the county budget, Fall noted, but she said she’s working with the county manager to make it happen.

“At the end of the day, sheriffs are legally tasked with keeping elections safe,” Fall told the group. “We need to figure out what that communication looks like.”

In Arizona, Maricopa County Sheriff Russ Skinner has made election safety a top priority since he was appointed in February, after his predecessor left to lead the Committee for Safe and Secure Elections.

The goal, he says, is to keep election sites secure without inadvertently making voters feel intimidated. Come November, plainclothes officers will be in place at many of the 200-plus polling locations across the county to protect workers and voters.

“Our No. 1 job is to make sure that they’re safe and that they can carry out the process that needs to be done,” Skinner says. “Maricopa County has seen major events – the Super Bowl, World Series. We treat the election process the same. We treat it as a major event.”

‘We need to send a message’

After the 2020 election and the ensuing Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, the next big test for elections came in 2022. Across the country, Trump-endorsed candidates echoed his rhetoric questioning the veracity of the infrastructure.

Nowhere was that more apparent than in Arizona, as Kari Lake sought to become the state’s next governor.

Maricopa County Supervisor Bill Gates, a Republican, had hoped the threats would soften, or disappear altogether, the further the nation moved from the insurrection.

“I naively thought that this would come to an end after we voted to certify the election,” he says.

But in August 2022, immediately after the state’s primary, threats started coming in to the county elections office via direct messaging on Instagram.

“You f***ers think you can cheat? … Hang yourself!” read one. “You will all be executed for your crimes,” read another.

Days after the general election, in which Lake narrowly lost to Democrat Katie Hobbs, Gates got an email threatening he would be poisoned. The sender said they knew where he got his food.

“You are about to be poisoned multiple times over again to make sure your death, or corpse, is carried out,” the message read.

Tom Liddy, a lifelong Republican who heads the civil division at the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, has received dozens of threats via email and voicemail. He says he typically hits “delete” and forgets about them.

But in late November 2022, Liddy was called to his supervisor’s office, where FBI officials awaited. They told him he and his family were in immediate danger, and they showed him messages that had been posted to the online forum patriots.win by a single user over several months.

One included Liddy’s former address and the names of all of his adult children, along with a cryptic message: “It would be a shame if someone got to this (sic) children. There are some crazies out there.” Other messages posted by the same person went even further, saying children were the “most important ones to get” because “dead children burn into the memories of people.”

The authorities stationed armed guards at Liddy’s home around the clock while the FBI’s Dallas field division, which had uncovered the threats, worked to identify who had made them. Liddy and his family were asked to wear body armor, and Liddy was encouraged to carry a gun.

“These two armed guards spent their Thanksgiving outside my house,” Liddy says. “I couldn’t get that out of my mind.”

The FBI traced the threats to Fred Goltz, a Canadian citizen living in Lubbock, Texas. A former minor league hockey player, Goltz wrote comedy sketches and TV pilots and at one point co-owned a local artificial turf business.

Friends and relatives called him a “family man” who liked shooting hoops with his son and playing volleyball with his daughters, the guy who would don a Santa suit to give presents to underprivileged kids.

When Liddy learned Goltz had pleaded guilty, he drove more than 700 miles to attend the 2023 sentencing. Goltz was sentenced to 42 months in jail but has appealed.

“I wanted to look him in the eye,” Liddy says. “I thought this guy was going to be a neo-Nazi skinhead with a swastika on his neck. But he wasn’t. He was just some guy with a wonderful wife and six kids.”

Goltz is one of about 20 people charged by the DOJ’s Election Threats Task Force, created in 2021 to track down and prosecute offenders across the country.

As of late July, 11 of those people have been convicted and sentenced to punishments ranging from 30 days to 42 months in prison. One was acquitted, and the others await adjudication.

A News21 analysis of these cases found two common threads: either a history of mental illness or claims of being caught up in a social media echo chamber spewing lies and disinformation, especially during the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The past few years, it’s been physically and mentally tough on everybody. In these challenges, sometimes you just need a release,” Goltz’s wife, Laura, testified at his sentencing. “I don’t know if this was his release, but I know that that’s not who he is.”

Only two of those charged are accused of threatening an official in the state where they live. Seven offenders targeted officials in Arizona.

Joshua Russell, 46, of Bucyrus, Ohio, received 30 months behind bars for making three threatening calls to Hobbs between August and November 2022, while she was running for Arizona governor against Lake.

Russell, who worked for a home improvement product manufacturer, pleaded guilty and expressed remorse. In court documents, he said he’d become wrapped up in politics and “felt out of control” and that his drug use and depression had increased.

As part of a court-ordered therapy program, Russell wrote a letter to Hobbs. He apologized, said social media and news had consumed him, and added that he couldn’t tell what was fact or fiction.

“I’m not a violent man. I am a broken man,” Russell wrote. “No one should be the target of such disrespectful behavior. I’m now learning that I was only projecting my hurt and pain toward others.”

Mark Rissi, 66, of Hiawatha, Iowa, is serving 30 months for threatening to lynch Maricopa County Supervisor Clint Hickman and then-Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich in 2021.

Rissi is the son of an Air Force pilot who died in Vietnam. His mental health diminished after a series of personal losses, his lawyer said in court records. Rissi’s brother died in 2017, his wife died of complications from Alzheimer’s disease in 2018, and his mother passed away the same month he made his threatening phone calls.

While in a “weakened emotional state, Mr. Rissi was inundated with misinformation and exaggerations” regarding the Arizona election, his lawyer wrote. “Mr. Rissi is remorseful for his actions. … Had he been in his right state of mind, he would have never engaged in the conduct.”

News21 sent letters to Russell and Rissi requesting interviews. Russell declined an interview through his warden. Rissi did not respond.

Despite the prosecutions, some question whether the government is doing enough to safeguard officials and the electoral process.

In July, U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., launched an inquiry to ensure federal officials investigate threats “expeditiously.” He’s asked the DOJ and FBI how many agents are dedicated to these cases and to explain what determines whether a case goes forward.

John Keller, who heads the DOJ task force, said in an interview with News21 that the group has reviewed hundreds of cases, but most don’t warrant a criminal charge because they include speech considered protected by the First Amendment.

“It’s things like: ‘You should be thrown in jail. You should be thrown out of office. You’re a traitor,’” Keller says. “That kind of hostility is not something that we’re able to prosecute.”

In those cases, he says, other agencies are stepping in to conduct security assessments to better prepare local officials should they or their infrastructure be targeted.

Congressional Democrats, including Ossoff, have introduced bills to provide states with resources related to election safety and to create federal penalties for intimidating or threatening an election official or voter. None has succeeded.

In some states, legislators are taking action.

In 2022, Maine mandated de-escalation and threat reporting training for election officials. The secretary of state must send an annual report of all investigated claims to the Legislature.

In Michigan, intimidating election officials became a misdemeanor in 2023. In Arizona, a 2023 law says election officials and poll workers may request their home addresses be excluded from public records.

“We need to send a message to people that these are crimes,” says Maricopa County Supervisor Gates, who declined to seek re-election this year. In January, Ryan Hadland of Phoenix was sentenced to three years’ probation for the threatening email Gates received.

“This is not a sustainable environment that we’re in right now,” Gates says.

Relief, at last

Just after the Fourth of July, Tina Barton stood at a courtroom podium with the man who had threatened her life seated at a table just to her left. Accompanied by her mother and husband, Barton had come to confront Andrew Nickels at his sentencing.

It had been more than 1,300 days since she first played his voicemail. Barton knew, because she had counted.

“That’s over 1,300 days of trauma,” she told the courtroom, noting that most of that time, she didn’t know what her tormentor even looked like. “He could have been any stranger passing me in a store, on a sidewalk, in a church or walking down my street.

“A shadow, a noise, someone standing too close to me now brings a wave of anxiety, a constant reminder of the trauma that lingers within me.”

Nickels, 38, of Carmel, Indiana, pleaded guilty in February. Court records show he had no prior criminal history and, in 2008, had been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, a condition marked by symptoms that can include hallucinations, delusions, depression and mania.

Defense attorney Steven Scharg blamed the crime on Nickels’ mental health and said his client had stopped taking his medication. He argued no prison time was warranted and that Nickels was “well on his way to being rehabilitated.”

At the sentencing, Nickels spoke only briefly, telling the judge about his mental health diagnoses and apologizing for his threats.

“I am a kind person,” he said. “I have brighter days ahead of me.”

Barton, however, called Nickels’ voicemail an “invisible scar” and told the judge she had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. She also asked the court to consider the effect such actions have on democracy, noting election officials across the country were watching the case.

She requested a sentence of at least 1,300 days in prison – the same amount of time she’d suffered. The judge ultimately sentenced Nickels to a fraction of that: 14 months in prison, followed by two years of supervised release.

Nickels left the courtroom with his parents, escorted by Scharg, who declined further comment.

Nickels and Barton never exchanged words, but Barton had one last message for him as she delivered her victim impact statement.

“Andrew,” she said, turning to face him head-on, “you haven’t gotten the best of me.”

Photos by Denzen Cortez, Peggy Dodd, Shelby Rickert and Olivia Talkington
Video by Gabi Morando, Denzen Cortez and Marshal Farmer

This report is part of “Fractured,” an examination of the state of American democracy produced by Carnegie-Knight News21. For more stories, visit https://fractured.news21.com. News21 reporters Denzen Cortez, Marshal Farmer and Gabi Morando contributed to this story