Don’t let the intimidation work: Vote like your future depends on it

Schemes to disrupt elections became frighteningly real in Arizona on Thursday when a hazardous-materials response team swarmed the state Capitol after election officials received an envelope containing an unknown white powder.

The Executive Tower was briefly evacuated on Thursday afternoon. Thankfully, no one was harmed. But was it just a prank?

Hardly.

The FBI is investigating similar suspicious mailings sent to other secretaries of state, including those in Louisiana, Oklahoma and Ohio. In all, more than 100 such letters were sent to elections officials, advocacy groups and Democratic elected officials nationwide.

“Yesterday’s attack was not a harmless prank,” Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said Friday about the envelope his office received on Oct. 15.

“It was an apparent attempt to disrupt our elections and intimidate the public servants who make them possible,” he added, calling on elected leaders across the political divide to condemn “the attack.”

Election workers sure do have their work cut out for them. And it’s getting worse, with some top election officials hellbent on sowing doubt about the very voting system they’re charged with safeguarding.

Top staffers for Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap earlier this month asked the FBI to investigate what turned out to be “bogus election allegations” against election workers under the supervision of the Board of Supervisors, the recorder’s partner in administering county elections.

And how that happened is just as troubling.

Election workers were doing legitimate work, a fact Heap’s staffers could have confirmed with one phone call. Instead, they filed a formal complaint with the Phoenix FBI office over a social media post from an utterly uninformed right-wing organization alleging something nefarious.

On Oct. 9, an election conspiracy group called We the People USA Alliance posted a video from Maricopa County’s public livestream showing two workers inside the Secure Tabulation Center late at night. Its caption: “busted.”

The FBI reviewed the complaint and referred it to the Attorney General’s Office, which found no evidence of wrongdoing. After all, the people in the video were election workers doing their jobs late at night.

Maricopa County Supervisor Kathy Brophy McGee blasted Heap for going to the FBI instead of calling them first.

“Public employees who work in elections already face public threats and intimidation, but it is disgusting that Recorder Heap and his team would add to this climate of fear by referring to the FBI our hardworking county employees who were simply doing their jobs,” McGee told 12 NEWS.

The post, still online as of this writing, has drawn more than 1.1 million views.

Heap should have known better than to amplify accusations from a group led by election denier Shelby Busch, who drew headlines years ago fo suggesting she’d “lynch” Heap’s predecessor, Stephen Richer.

But it fits with Heap’s fights against fellow Republicans on the Board of Supervisors over election administration duties, some of which appear to have little purpose beyond sowing doubt about the integrity of the vote.

So, brace yourselves, folks. We’re heading into a potentially turbulent few weeks as early voting continues for the Nov. 3 midterms and fears grow about what election deniers may try next, especially President Donald Trump, who during his Arizona visit this week falsely claimed again that the 2020 election was rigged. And, he added for good measure and also falsely, so were the 2022 and 2024 elections — at least for the races that Kari Lake, whose name he couldn’t remember, lost.

“What a rigged election that was, and it’s a shame,” Trump lied to his MAGA followers gathered in Bullhead City on Oct. 14, suggesting the “damn machines were broken in Republican areas.”

Fears of Trump directly interfering — by seizing ballots, for instance — if he doesn’t like the results are real. And if the polls are right and Democrats do take control of Congress, then he’ll be furious and his behavior unpredictable.

Fontes’ call for leaders across party lines to stand up for voting integrity as the cornerstone of our democracy takes on a sense of urgency.

“We will not be intimidated,” Fontes said. “We will not be distracted, and we will not allow threats to interfere with Arizona elections.”

But they will keep trying. Fontes is also right that “the most powerful response to intimidation is participation.”

In this case, participation means voting.

Do it to protect our freedom to choose. Do it to protect our right to choose freely and without fear.