States Are Bracing for Social Media-Enabled Election Violence
Election workers across the US have received death threats and online harassment, leading to resignations
A police officer stands outside the Philadelphia Convention Center as ballots are counted on November 06, 2020.
Photographer: Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesState elections officials say they’re seeing an uptick in a new kind of social media-fueled danger to US midterms: online anger that threatens to spill over into real-world violence.
In Arizona, online conspiracy theories resulted in so many harassing phone calls to the secretary of state’s office, employees had to take a break from answering. In Michigan, officials have seen such a flood of violent rhetoric online that this week they sent letters to tech company CEOs pleading with them to do more to control their platforms. In Maine, a state where Election Day is associated with patriotic pie-eating, a poll worker last year received a credible death threat on Facebook.