Poll workers count Fulton County’s ballots at the State Farm Arena on November 4, 2020 in Atlanta. The lies spread by former President Trump and his allies led to threats against election workers. Jessica McGowan / Getty Images hide subtitles
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Jessica McGowan / Getty Images
Poll workers count Fulton County’s ballots at the State Farm Arena on November 4, 2020 in Atlanta. The lies spread by former President Trump and his allies led to threats against election workers.
Jessica McGowan / Getty Images
By the time his time at the White House came to an end, former President Donald Trump was obsessed with a downtown Atlanta office and workers there, making the Fulton County’s electoral division a target of conspiracy theories and lies, leading to violent threats and Intimidation resulted.
Fulton County’s workforce, as well as election workers across the country, are still grappling with the emotional and psychological trauma they suffered as a result of Trump’s disinformation campaign about the 2020 election. This can have permanent consequences for the recruitment and retention of employees. but often underestimated field.
Online threats created real dangers. Law enforcement agencies were stationed in front of the homes of some election officials. To feel more secure, at least one officer’s family moved in with in-laws. In more troubling cases, poll workers heard strangers knocking on their front doors and menacing voices on the other end of the phone offering racial slurs and promising executions.
Before Trump’s disinformation campaign began in earnest, electoral departments across the country were already beaten as they struggled to cope with the myriad effects of the pandemic.
Beverly Walker, 62, died of the virus in the Fulton County office. Walker had worked in the county for two decades, where she was known as a mother figure, thanks in part to her goodie drawer stocked with tea, coffee, and snacks.
“It was just so unexpected,” said staff member Shaye Moss, “and just so quick and just so crazy.”
Moss took Walker’s death hard. Walker was a close friend and mentor of Moss who invited Moss over for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Things got tougher for the Fulton County’s electoral team in the weeks leading up to the November election. 23 workers in the county warehouse tested positive for COVID-19, and the department barely received all of the voting equipment that was shipped before the polls began.
“We come for you”
Trump falsely claimed victory in Georgia on election night, despite Fulton County alone counting tens of thousands of postal ballot papers. Reporters and partisan observers flocked to the counting center.
With all the attention came conspiracies. Trump’s sons Eric and Donald Jr. retweeted a 30-second video of a temporary worker in Fulton called Lawrence Sloan. In the video, a narrator falsely alleged that Sloan threw away a postal ballot that generated at least five million views, as well as racist comments, and requested that Sloan be identified and arrested.
Shortly after seeing the video and comments, Sloan stepped outside Fulton County’s postal voting facility for a break, but was scared to see Trump supporters protesting outside.
“Even if it’s not about me, I’m outside and you know what I look like,” Sloan recalled. “With every second that goes by, more people will see this. Just being here is just not automatically the best.”
He left the scene, stayed with friends the night and changed his appearance so that he would not be recognized.
When Georgia’s presidential election report waned, Trump and his allies focused their attacks on the Fulton County’s electoral division, where all staff except the director are black.
Fulton County’s poll worker Shaye Moss, along with her mother, has been featured in conspiracy theories spread by Trump and his allies. Megan Varner / Getty Images hide subtitles
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Megan Varner / Getty Images
Fulton County’s poll worker Shaye Moss, along with her mother, has been featured in conspiracy theories promoted by Trump and his allies.
Megan Varner / Getty Images
Rudy Giuliani turned a conspiracy against Shaye Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman, who had helped out as a temporary worker. He compared her to drug dealers.
“They should have already been interviewed. Their workplaces, their homes should have been searched,” he said at a virtual hearing organized by the Republican legislature in Georgia.
Calls came to Moss’ old phone her son was using.
“He’ll answer it, and they’ll just call him all kinds of racial slurs and tell him what they’re going to do to him,” Moss said.
A stranger knocked on the door of Moss’ grandmother, where Moss used to live, and said they were there to arrest the citizens. Moss’ grandma called her desperately.
“She just yelled on the phone like ‘No! Stop it! You can’t come in here! Stop it!’ So I just had to call the police and that happens all the time, “Moss said.
Strangers also appeared at the home of Ruby Freeman, Moss’ mother. Pizza deliveries showed Freeman hadn’t ordered and they told police they had received at least 420 emails and 75 text messages, including one that said, “We know where you live, we’re coming to pick you up. ”
Moss oversaw the most public portion of the postal voting in Fulton County, and she blames herself for the threats and harassment that affect her and her family.
“I’m the one who told my mom that we were hiring, we needed help. I shouldn’t have included my family at all. I should have just stayed in the office like everyone else,” Moss said. “I always try to help and do my best and be available, but I’m always the one who gets on my nerves every time.”
Trump mentioned Freeman’s name 18 times during a now infamous phone call to reporters urging Georgian Foreign Secretary Brad Raffensperger to illegally change election results. The appeal is cited in the US House-approved impeachment process.
“I’ll take anyone you want on Ruby Freeman and your beautiful daughter, a very beautiful young lady, I’m sure of that. But Ruby Freeman, I’ll take anyone you want,” Trump said.
Fulton County’s election officer Rick Barron speaks to reporters on November 5, 2020. Barron now questions the importance of his job after the disinformation campaign launched against his office. “I just feel like I have a role in it that no longer matters.” Tami Chappell / AFP via Getty Images Hide caption
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Tami Chappell / AFP via Getty Images
Fulton County’s election officer Rick Barron speaks to reporters on November 5, 2020. Barron now questions the importance of his job after the disinformation campaign launched against his office. “I just feel like I have a role in it that no longer matters.”
Tami Chappell / AFP via Getty Images
Fulton County Election Officer Rick Barron and other department personnel also faced threats and harassment. When they listened to their phone messages at work, voices would call them “bastards”, “lowlifes” and “crooks”.
Callers promised to shoot the office. “I don’t know what we’re doing these days. Is it a firing squad? Is it hanging for treason,” an anonymous caller said in a message to Barron, “Boy, you better run.”
Staff spotted people taking photos of their license plates in the parking lot and a drone flying nearby. Barron was concerned about his daughter’s safety.
“The people you contact are not the people you worry about, but for everyone you have contacted there will be some of those nuts; you will never hear them come,” Barron said.
Permanent consequences
Election workers were harassed and threatened in every state President Biden won, and in some states, former President Trump won, according to Jennifer Morrell, an electoral partner who consults with state and local electoral departments.
Morrell said the threats and feelings of helplessness in the face of the disinformation are pushing election officials to leave the field.
“People who do this job do it because they believe in it, because they have strong convictions when it comes to exercising and serving democracy,” she said, “but we are certainly seeing an exodus.”
Morrell is particularly concerned that election departments may have difficulty recruiting the thousands of low-wage temporary workers required to hold elections every two years if those potential workers are concerned about threats.
“I’m appalled to think that this might be the new norm,” said Morrell. “I think it’s really important that we talk about it and see how we can stamp it out.”
When Morrell speaks to local election officials, she hears frustration. You tell her about politicians who are undermining the very system that put them in office and sometimes even undermining the very idea of democracy itself. Thoughts like these weighed on Barron, especially after pro-Trump extremists stormed the U.S. Capitol.
“I don’t know if you want to call it an existential internal crisis that I have,” he said. “I just feel like I have a role in it that no longer matters.”
The 2020 general election was among the best-run in Fulton County’s history, Barron said, but Trump and his allies made it feel like a disaster.
This story is part of a collaboration between WABE, NPR and Atlanta Magazine. You can read a longer version of the story here. This was made possible with support from the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University and the Abrams Foundation (not affiliated with the Democrat Stacey Abrams).
