Douglas County, Ga., elections officials Milton Kidd, left, and Tesha Green fear being followed home by angry voters. Nationwide, many election officials are concerned for their safety. (Matt Vasilogambros/Stateline)

Editor’s note: This story contains profanities and racist slurs.

DOUGLASVILLE, Ga. — When Milton Kidd leaves work at the end of the day, he slips out the back door of the domed Douglas County Courthouse, avoiding the public entrance where people might berate him or demand his home address.

He never takes the same route home two days in a row, and he makes random turns to avoid being followed.

Kidd, a Black man, has a very dangerous job: He is the elections and voter registration director for Douglas County.

“Milton Kidd is a nasty n***** living on tax money like the scum he is,” one voter wrote in an email Kidd shared with Stateline. “Living on tax money, like a piece of low IQ n***** shit.”

Another resident from Kidd’s county of 149,000 west of Atlanta left him a voicemail.

“I don’t know if you’re aware, Milton, but the American people have set a precedent for what they do to f***ing tyrants and oppressors who occupy government office,” the caller said. “Yep, back in the 1700s, they were called the British and the f***ing American people got so fed up with the f***ing British being dicks, kind of like you, and then they just f***ing killed all the f***ing British.”

Kidd smiled incredulously as he shared his security routine and the hate-filled messages that inspired it. He is dumbfounded that he’s the target of such vitriol for administering elections in 2024 — but he knows where it originated.

The lies told by former President Donald Trump, who faces state felony charges for trying to pressure Georgia officials to change the 2020 results, have resonated with many Douglas County voters, Kidd said. Now this nonpartisan official, like many others across the country, is forced to face their ire.

“It’s an idea that has become insidious in the mindsets of Americans, that because a single individual did not win an election, that now I can behave like this,” said Kidd, who has a thick beard and wears a thumb-size crystal on a black string around his neck.

As he prepares for the next presidential election, Kidd said he will continue to press his state’s elected officials for more leadership and money to protect him, his staff and the democratic process.

“If this office fails, then our democracy has failed,” he said. “I will never let a detractor who calls with vile language deter me from the work that I do.”

‘Like standing in a puddle of gasoline’

Kidd is far from the only election official who has faced threats inspired by the lies of Trump and his allies, who continue to claim without evidence that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

Nationally, 38% of local election officials have experienced threats, harassment or abuse since 2020 just for doing their jobs, according to a survey released in May by the Brennan Center for Justice, a voting rights nonprofit housed at the New York University School of Law. More than half of the over 900 respondents said they are concerned about the safety of their colleagues and staff.

Kidd’s colleagues in neighboring counties also have felt the hostility.

In the green hills of Bartow County, a rural community in northwest Georgia, Election Supervisor Joseph Kirk has taken steps to protect himself, though he won’t disclose specifics. While harassment has not reached the level it has in other counties, he said he has lost staff members who left their positions because of the changed atmosphere.

“There’s a lot more animosity now,” he said in his Cartersville office, a red-brick building 4 miles from Main Street.

Cobb County Director of Elections Tate Fall is also fortifying her suburban Atlanta elections office. In the coming weeks, her office will install a shatterproof safety film on the glass that shields the front desk. More access points will require key cards for entry, and there will be additional panic buttons.

“It’s very surreal,” she said. “In the office, people have become so desensitized to people yelling at them that they don’t consider a lot a threat anymore.”

At least a dozen states have enacted new protections for local election officials in recent years, including boosting criminal penalties for those who threaten or harass them.

This month, Georgia officials announced a first-in-the-nation requirement that all new police officers undergo a course on election security, partly focusing on protecting election officials from threats.

This is part of a broader mission to build more coordination between sheriff’s offices and elections offices, said Chris Harvey, deputy executive director of the Georgia Police Officer Training and Standards Council, which will lead the effort.

Harvey, a former detective, also served as Georgia’s state elections director for six years, including through the 2020 presidential election.

After the January 2021 U.S. Senate runoff, he was doxed — his home address and a picture of his house were posted online. He also received an emailed death threat that included a photo of him with crosshairs over his face.

While he says he wasn’t worried about his safety, he did worry about his wife and four children at home. He called the local police, who posted a car in front of his house for two weeks.

“In this supercharged environment, it’s like standing in a puddle of gasoline,” he told Stateline. “Anything can set it off. It didn’t used to be like that.”

The democratic path

Democracy’s fragile promise has always been part of Kidd’s life.

Kidd, 39, grew up in East St. Louis, Illinois, a former manufacturing hub of 18,000 people along the Mississippi River.

His family was part of the Great Migration, moving north from Southern states such as Arkansas and Mississippi looking for work and safety. But shortly after his ancestors’ arrival, white mobs killed hundreds of Black newcomers during several months of 1917, displacing 6,000 Black people in the southern Illinois city.

His grandmother was a sharecropper in Luxor, Arkansas, and instilled in his mother the importance of voting. Growing up, he heard stories about civil rights activists Fannie Lou Hamer, who was beaten for registering voters, and Medgar Evers, who was assassinated. It made Kidd a student of history, able to recite the Declaration of Independence and parts of the Constitution.

“The importance of the ballot box has always been something that has been stressed to me,” he said. “I know in my own family individuals have tried to register to vote and had dogs sicced on them. These are not words in a book. It’s not that far off.”

Inspired by his father, who left school in the ninth grade to work, and his mother, who received a college education later in her life, Kidd earned his master’s degree in public administration from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville in 2010.

He then did what he called a “reverse migration” back to the South to begin working elections in various counties in the Atlanta area, including Douglas County. He started there in 2015 and was promoted to lead the office three years later.

In that time, Kidd has seen the election environment turn nasty.

“We’ve reshaped this nation into an uglier, vile, vitriolic spirit that we’re just allowing to continue to manifest,” he said last month.

He and his eight full-time staff members have attempted to bolster their public standing by going to local churches, fairs and political party meetings of both parties to share details about how they run elections and tabulate the vote securely.

But he needs more resources from the state. The same lawmakers who wink and nod at the lie that massive fraud is stealing elections do not support additional funding for local election administration, he said, especially for the safety of election administrators.

Every one of the security enhancements he made to his office — including a series of magnetic locks on the doors — came through outside grant funding, a practice the state later outlawed in 2021.

Some of Kidd’s staff members have quit, and he’s finding it hard to fill the temporary positions that allow elections to run smoothly. Constant turnover can lead to errors, which leads to more distrust. The workers who have stayed are still fearful.

“On election night, my husband definitely waits for me to get home,” said Tesha Green, the county’s deputy elections director. “You have to always make sure that no one’s there when we’re leaving out the door.”

Kidd was encouraged by Georgia’s announcement that it would require all new police officers to undergo a course on election security. Does Kidd feel supported by his local sheriff’s office? He chuckled and said there’s a lot more that could be done.

Cpt. Trent Wilson of the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office said the office took Kidd’s complaints seriously. Though they were concerning, he said, there was nothing criminal in the voicemails and emails Kidd received.

“It was very distasteful,” Wilson said. “But just because they’re distasteful don’t mean they’re criminal.”

Pressed about what constitutes a threat, he added: “Look, I’m a Black man. So, we don’t like to be called a n*****. But calling someone a n***** is not a crime.”

When election season comes, he said the sheriff’s office boosts security, adding more deputies to the courthouse. Visitors already must pass through metal detectors, he noted.

As head of the election office, Kidd knows he’s a target, and he’s accepted that. But he worries about his staff, many of whom are older women who don’t feel safe walking to their cars at night. And, closer to home, he worries that if something happens to him, no one will be able to take care of his beloved dogs, Kleo and Knight.

“In 2024, I work a job that I have to allow myself to be called a n*****,” he said. “But I do it because I want to make sure people have access to the ballot box.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and X.

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A voting sign at the entrance of a polling station at Takoma Park Middle School, in Takoma Park, Md., Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016. ( AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Preventing people who are not United States citizens from casting a ballot has reemerged as a focal point in the ongoing Republican drive to safeguard “election integrity,” even though noncitizens are rarely involved in voter fraud.

Ahead of November’s presidential election, congressional and state Republican lawmakers are aiming to keep noncitizens away from the polls. They’re using state constitutional amendments and new laws that require citizenship verification to vote. Noncitizens can vote in a handful of local elections in several states, but already are not allowed to vote in statewide or federal elections.

Some Republicans argue that preventing noncitizens from casting ballots — long a boogeyman in conservative politics — reduces the risk of fraud and increases confidence in American democracy. But even some on the right think these efforts are going too far, as they churn up anti-immigration sentiment and unsupported fears of widespread fraud, all to boost turnout among the GOP base.

While Republican congressional leaders want to require documentation proving U.S. citizenship when registering to vote in federal elections, voters in at least four states will decide on ballot measures in November that would amend their state constitutions to clarify that only U.S. citizens can vote in state and local elections.

Over the past six years, Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Louisiana, North Dakota and Ohio have all amended their state constitutions.

In Kentucky — which along with Idaho, Iowa and Wisconsin is now considering a constitutional amendment — noncitizens voting will not be tolerated, said Republican state Sen. Damon Thayer, who voted in February to put the amendment on November’s ballot. Five Democrats between the two chambers backed the Republican-authored legislation, while 16 others dissented.

“There is a lot of concern here about the Biden administration’s open border policies,” Thayer, the majority floor leader, told Stateline. “People see it on the news every day, with groups of illegals pouring through the border. And they’re combined with concerns on election integrity.”

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson expressed similar concerns last month when he announced new legislation — despite an existing 1996 ban — that would make it illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections. During a trip to Florida to meet with former President Donald Trump, the Louisiana Republican said it’s common sense to require proof of citizenship.

“It could, if there are enough votes, affect the presidential election,” he said, standing in front of Trump in the presumptive presidential nominee’s Mar-a-Lago resort. “We cannot wait for widespread fraud to occur, especially when the threat of fraud is growing with every single illegal immigrant that crosses that border.”

That rhetoric is rooted in a fear about how the U.S. is changing demographically, becoming more diverse as the non-white population increases, said longtime Republican strategist Mike Madrid. Though this political strategy has worked to galvanize support among GOP voters in the past, he questions whether this will be effective politically in the long term.

“There’s no problem being solved here,” said Madrid, whose forthcoming book, “The Latino Century,” outlines the group’s growing voter participation. “This is all politics. It’s all about stoking fears and angering the base.”

Noncitizens are voting in some elections around the country, but not in a way that many might think.

Where noncitizens vote

In 16 cities and towns in California, Maryland and Vermont (along with the District of Columbia), noncitizens are allowed to vote in some local elections, such as for school board or city council. Voters in Santa Ana, California, will decide in November whether to allow noncitizens to vote in citywide elections.

In 2022, New York’s State Supreme Court struck down New York City’s 2021 ordinance that allowed noncitizens to vote in local elections, ruling it violated the state constitution. Proponents have argued that people, regardless of citizenship status, should be able to vote on local issues affecting their children and community.

During the first 150 years of the U.S., 40 states at various times permitted noncitizens to vote in elections. That came to a halt in the 1920s when nativism ramped up and states began making voting a privilege for only U.S. citizens.

The number of noncitizen voters has been relatively small, and those voters are never allowed to participate in statewide or national elections. Local election officials maintain separate voter lists to keep noncitizens out of statewide databases.

In Vermont’s local elections in March, 62 noncitizens voted in Burlington, 13 voted in Montpelier and 11 voted in Winooski, all accounting for a fraction of the total votes.

In Takoma Park, Maryland, of the 347 noncitizens who were registered to vote in 2017, just 72 cast a ballot, according to the latest data provided by the city. And in San Francisco, 36 noncitizens registered to vote in 2020 and 31 voted.

Voter turnout among noncitizens is low for two reasons, said Ron Hayduk, a professor of political science at San Francisco State University, who is one of the leading scholars in this area. Many noncitizens in these jurisdictions do not realize they have the right to vote, and many are afraid of deportation or legal issues, he said.

Registration forms in jurisdictions that allow noncitizens to vote in local elections do acknowledge the risks. In San Francisco, local election officials warn that the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement or other agencies could gain access to the city’s registration lists and advise residents to consult an immigration attorney before registering to vote.

“Immigrants were very excited about this new right to vote, they wanted to vote, but many of them did not ultimately register and vote because they were concerned,” Hayduk said.

While there are some noncitizens participating in a handful of local elections, they’re not participating illegally in any substantial way in state and national elections.

Though there’s room for legitimate debate about whether noncitizens should be allowed to vote at the local level, there is no widespread voter fraud among noncitizens nationally, said Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.

In 2020, federal investigators charged 19 noncitizens for voting in North Carolina elections. A national database run by The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, shows that there have been fewer than 100 cases of voter fraud tied to noncitizens since 2002, according to a recent count by The Washington Post.

Trump continues to falsely assert that he was the rightful winner of the 2020 presidential election and that he had more of the popular vote in 2016. He has claimed without evidence that voter fraud was to blame, including in part from noncitizens.

With illegal immigration near the top of major issues for voters ahead of November, Trump and his movement sense they have momentum with the public to tie immigration concerns with their continued election claims, Olson said.

It’s a way of keeping Democrats on the back foot, by falsely accusing them of allowing immigrants to come into the country illegally so they can vote, he added.

“The imaginings that there is some sort of plot by an entire major political party is just remarkably evidence-free,” he said.

Fighting ‘the left’

Although voter fraud among noncitizens is not happening widely, states should still add protections to their voting systems to prevent that possibility, said Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican.

Raffensperger has been a major proponent of a Peach State law that requires documentation to verify the citizenship status of voters. In 2022, he announced that an internal audit of Georgia’s voter rolls over the past 25 years found that 1,634 noncitizens had attempted to register to vote, but not a single one cast a ballot.

“I will continue to fight the left on this issue so that only American citizens decide American elections,” Raffensperger wrote in a statement to Stateline.

Meanwhile, lawmakers in Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina and West Virginia are actively considering legislation that would add ballot initiatives for November to prevent noncitizen voting. Those bills are at various points in the legislative process, with many having already passed one chamber.

During a committee hearing last week, Republican Missouri state Sen. Ben Brown said the state’s constitutional language is vague enough to allow cities to let noncitizens vote. While presenting his bill, he cited California’s parallel constitutional wording and how cities such as Oakland and San Francisco allow noncitizens to vote in local elections.

Most state constitutions have similar language around voter eligibility, saying that “every” U.S. citizen that is 18 or over can vote. The proposed amendments usually would change one word, emphasizing that “only” U.S. citizens can vote, eliminating an ambiguity in the text that has left room for cities in several states to allow noncitizen participation in elections.

It’s a “pretty simple” fix, said Jack Tomczak, vice president of outreach for Americans for Citizen Voting, a group that works with state lawmakers to amend their constitutions so that only citizens can vote in state and local elections.

“It does dilute the voice of citizens of this country,” Tomczak said. “And it also dilutes the nature of citizenship.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

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CHICAGO, ILLINOIS - OCTOBER 31: Police investigate the scene where as many as 14 people were reported to have been shot on October 31, 2022 in Chicago, Illinois. Three juveniles were among those reported to have been wounded in the drive-by shooting, according to published reports. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Chicago has joined a growing list of cities that have cut ties with a controversial company that tries to reduce urban gun violence with 24/7 technology that listens for the crack of gunshots and immediately notifies police.

This month, Chicago Democratic Mayor Brandon Johnson announced the city would not renew its contract with SoundThinking, the California-based company behind ShotSpotter, software that uses a network of hidden neighborhood sensors to detect the sound of gunfire.

Chicago was spending around $9 million annually on one of the biggest installations in the country, covering around 100 square miles.

More than 150 cities nationwide use ShotSpotter in an effort to help police departments respond to more incidences of gunfire, which often go unreported by residents. Cities that have recently shown new or continued interest in the technology include Cleveland, Seattle and Little Rock, Arkansas.

Leaders say it can help save gunshot victims’ lives by enabling emergency responders to get to the scene of a shooting more quickly. As a result, they add, investigators can more quickly recover ballistic and bullet casing evidence used to solve crimes.

But over the past decade, cities around the country such as Atlanta; Charlotte, North Carolina; New Orleans; and San Antonio, Texas, have decided to discontinue their use of ShotSpotter. Those decisions coincided with a growing body of research showing that ShotSpotter has not succeeded in reducing gun violence, has slowed police response times to emergency calls, and often did not lead to evidence recovery. SoundThinking has vigorously disputed criticism about ShotSpotter’s efficacy.

As cities continue to reevaluate their strategies for bringing down gun assault numbers, which spiked during the pandemic and are slowly falling, they must focus on tools that are proven to keep their communities safe, especially with strained resources, said Thomas Abt, a senior fellow at the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan think tank, and an associate research professor in criminology and criminal justice at the University of Maryland.

“It’s troubling to have a powerful for-profit vendor pushing this strategy that has been widely adopted, but there’s not a lot of evidence that it’s particularly effective,” Abt said.

The Chicago mayor’s office reiterated that concern when it announced Johnson’s decision to stop using ShotSpotter, saying the city “will deploy its resources on the most effective strategies and tactics proven to accelerate the current downward trend in violent crime.” The city plans to decommission the software on Sept. 22.

Johnson’s decision makes good on a campaign promise he made during last year’s mayoral election, when he called the technology “unreliable.” An earlier investigation by Chicago’s inspector general found that ShotSpotter alerts “rarely produce documented evidence of a gun-related crime, investigatory stop, or recovery of a firearm.”

“The technology was not making residents safer and wasn’t a useful community safety tool. I think it will raise questions for other cities,” said Jonathan Manes, a Chicago-based attorney with the MacArthur Justice Center. The center released a report in 2021 that found the city’s use of ShotSpotter led to investigatory dead-ends and more police monitoring in communities of color.

SoundThinking did not agree to an interview with Stateline. In a statement, however, the company said that until September, it “will continue to provide the Chicago Police Department and the citizens of Chicago with the highest-quality gunshot detection services that the city has relied upon for the last seven years.”

City aldermen have been split on Johnson’s decision, with some agreeing the software did not use taxpayer dollars wisely on an academically disproven and expensive technology, and others saying it will make communities plagued by gun violence less safe and harder for police to do their jobs.

Around the country, ShotSpotter remains a popular tool in police departments, as more cities consider adopting or expanding their use, even as criticism slowly gains traction.

How police listen for gunfire

In California, the suburban city of Richmond, just across the bay from San Francisco, has been using ShotSpotter for the past decade. When the microphones installed around the city of 114,000 detect gunfire, alerts are sent both to emergency dispatchers and to officers through an app on their phones.

The alert shows how many rounds of gunfire were detected, what sort of firearm was used and a pinpoint dot that gives a search radius for where the shots were fired. ShotSpotter uses 20 sensors per square mile.

Through the app, officers also can listen to an audio file of the shots. Using this information, dispatchers send officers to the scene to see whether there are victims and to collect evidence.

The details give officers a defined area in which to search instead of using “the old school way” of responding to a 911 call from a resident who heard but didn’t see gunfire, unable to say exactly where the shots were fired, said Lt. Donald Patchin of the Richmond Police Department.

He pointed to a December incident in which ShotSpotter was instrumental in leading to the arrest of two people and the confiscation of two firearms, using the location of the gunshot detection as a launching point to gathering evidence. The information isn’t used as the sole piece of evidence in prosecuting crimes, but it can help law enforcement, Patchin said.

“Unequivocally, it has resulted in us getting firearms out of the hands of felons and people that aren’t allowed to have guns, and we’ve got them off the street,” he said. “We’re fairly happy with the system.”

Last year, Richmond saw a record low number of homicides since the city started tracking data in 1971, which Patchin in part attributes to ShotSpotter.

In Seattle, the police department will test ShotSpotter this year, subject to public comment. The city council heeded calls from Democratic Mayor Bruce Harrell to inject $1.5 million into the budget for the pilot program after Seattle set a homicide record last year.

Seattle badly needs the technology alongside community-led public safety plans, said the Rev. Harriett Walden, co-founder of Mothers for Police Accountability, a local grassroots group. Too many children, especially in Black communities, are being traumatized by gunfire, she said.

“We have to see if this works for us,” Walden said, “if ShotSpotter can help us be able to get some arrests, be able to get people to the scene right away, and then be able to talk to young people about trauma and how this is not normal behavior.”

Growing criticism

Even as cities continue to use ShotSpotter, though, many others are reconsidering their contracts.

Over the past year, leaders in Dayton, Ohio; Durham, North Carolina; and Portland, Oregon, have decided not to use ShotSpotter. Portland, for instance, found the software was not likely to reduce enough gun violence for the amount of money the city would need to spend. Leaders said they would concentrate on proven community outreach programs that targeted people most likely to commit gun violence at the micro level, instead of listening devices.

“It’s all bunk, but it’s a good sell for cities that are hard-strapped for a way to stop gun crime,” said Eleni Manis, research director for Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, a New York City-based nonprofit that fights police surveillance of American communities. “It’s a technological boondoggle.”

Manis and her colleagues published a 2022 report showing that ShotSpotter had a difficult time weeding out noises that sounded like gunfire, such as fireworks or cars backfiring. The report also documented research showing that the program’s use doesn’t reduce gun crimes. And it doesn’t improve the medical outcomes of gunshot victims, police officers’ ability to clear homicide cases or communities’ cooperation with police.

“My primary beef goes beyond whether it works or not,” Manis said. “It doesn’t actually promote public safety. It really wastes officers’ time.”

A November working paper out of the University of California, Santa Barbara found that in Chicago, police officers spent so much time responding to ShotSpotter detections, some of which were false, that it took them significantly longer to respond to real emergencies. Also, because police arrived later to the scenes of actual shootings, they were less likely to make arrests.

For a police department such as Chicago’s, which is suffering from officer and funding shortages, ShotSpotter exacerbates institutional challenges by reallocating resources away from other 911 calls, said Michael Topper, a doctoral candidate in economics and co-author of the study.

“If you implement this technology that requires officers to do more work, then their other work is also going to suffer,” Topper said. “Police departments must evaluate what they have before starting to implement it.”

SoundThinking, the company behind ShotSpotter, vehemently disagrees with these studies, saying on its website that the gunshot detection technology has a high accuracy rate, while also helping police and emergency responders get to shooting scenes more quickly.

What is clear is that police who use the technology do find out about more gunshots than they did before using it, said Justin Nix, an associate professor of criminology and criminal justice at the University of Nebraska Omaha.

He wrote a study on Omaha’s use of ShotSpotter that found the police department would not have known about thousands of gunshots from 2014 to 2017 if not for the software. But while ShotSpotter led to more police reports, it did not produce more arrests than 911 calls did. If cities are going to use this tool, he said, they have to understand its limitations.

“Maybe it has a great deal of potential that hasn’t been realized yet,” Nix said. “But there’s no concrete evidence to date that would lead us to be confident that this is where we should put our dollars.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

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Douglas County election workers process primary election ballots in Castle Rock on June 28, 2022. (Carl Payne for Colorado Newsline)

WASHINGTON — Federal law enforcement and cybersecurity officials are warning the nation’s state election administrators that they face serious threats ahead of November’s presidential election.

Secretaries of state and state election directors must be ready for potential cyberattacks, both familiar and uncomfortably new, according to the feds. And they must remain vigilant about possible threats to their personal safety.

Voter databases could be targeted this year through phishing or ransomware attacks, election officials were told. Bad actors — both foreign and domestic — are trying to erode confidence in the integrity of elections through dis- and misinformation, and advancements in artificial intelligence present unprecedented challenges to democracy.

“The threat environment, unfortunately, is very high,” said Tim Langan, executive assistant director for the Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch of the FBI, speaking last week at the winter conference of the National Association of Secretaries of State in Washington. “It is extremely alarming.”

Kentucky Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams knows this all too well.

Hours after he was sworn in for his second term early last month, there was a bomb threat at the state capitol in Frankfort. An email sent to several state government offices, including Adams’, said that the bombs placed at the capitol would “make sure you all end up dead.” Eight other state capitols received similar threats, but no bombs were found.

“Hopefully, it’s not a sign of what’s to come this year,” Adams told Stateline. “The benefit of all that we have gone through the last several years is that everybody in this room is psychologically prepared in 2024.”

He pointed out that since 2016 — when Russia and China tried to influence the outcome of the presidential election — state election officials have bolstered their relationships with federal cybersecurity and law enforcement agencies, election security experts and with fellow top state officials across the country through information-sharing partnerships.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced election officials to elevate those partnerships in an increasingly stressful and dangerous environment.

While the warnings that Adams and his peers received were stark, state election officials left the conference with a new understanding of the threats, along with new tools to combat them and new allies to help prepare in the months until the 2024 general election.

“We think a lot more creatively today about what could possibly go wrong and what are the challenges than we ever could have thought just four years ago,” Adams added.

Threats of violence and cybersecurity concerns

International criminal groups and foreign adversaries such as China, Iran, North Korea and Russia have made “extraordinary” advances in finding ways to break into systems, steal data and disrupt elections, said Eric Goldstein, executive assistant director for cybersecurity at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

“We are in a really difficult cybersecurity environment right now,” he said.

Commonly called CISA, the federal agency last week unveiled a new website, #Protect2024, to provide resources for state and local election officials during the primary season and the general election in November.

Regionally based federal cybersecurity officials help train local election officials in internet
safety, offer security assessments for voting locations and county courthouses, and encourage county clerk offices to adopt .gov websites.

The same day that CISA unveiled its new website to protect elections, it issued a warning that China is actively targeting America’s critical infrastructure, particularly in the communications, energy, transportation and water systems sectors.

During Goldstein’s presentation, Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows and Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, both Democrats, said they worry that county and municipal election officials in rural areas may not take these threats seriously, thinking they are too small to be a target.

“Every single location is at risk regardless of size, regardless of sector,” Goldstein said in response.

In early January, a cyberattack disabled court, tax and phone systems in Fulton County, Georgia, which includes Atlanta. Late in the month, local governments in Colorado, Missouri and Pennsylvania were hit with ransomware attacks.

“We’re under attack, and we need to be protecting everything,” said Rich Schliep, chief information officer at the Colorado Department of State, at an adjoining conference in Washington for the National Association of State Election Directors.

State and local election officials also continue to face personal threats at their offices, at ballot tabulation centers and at polling places, while also receiving emailed death threats and hazardous physical mail.

State election officials should invest in gloves, masks and the opioid-reversal drug Narcan, and should know how to safely open mail and what to do with a threatening letter, said Brendan Donahue, assistant inspector in charge at the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, who spoke to both conferences.

Malicious mail isn’t new in the United States, he pointed out, and the law enforcement agency is still investigating a string of fentanyl-laced letters sent to election offices across the country during last November’s elections.

Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab, a Republican, encouraged his counterparts to get in contact now with their local FBI field office and its elections crime coordinator.

“You don’t want to do this in the third week of November this year,” Schwab said. “I really encourage you to go and start developing those relationships.”

Artificial intelligence and the disinformation challenge

Last month, voters in New Hampshire received a robocall seemingly from President Joe Biden telling them not to vote in the state’s primary. But when state election officials took a closer look at the call, they found it wasn’t Biden’s voice but one generated from artificial intelligence.

In response, the Federal Communications Commission banned the use of AI-generated voices in robocalls, saying they can be used to suppress the vote. New Hampshire Republican Attorney General John Formella started an investigation and sent a cease-and-desist letter to two Texas-based companies involved in creating the message.

But artificial intelligence can do so much more. AI-generated content can be used to create hyperlocal messages to voters to spread false information about polling place locations or voting times. It can create messages in other languages discouraging foreign-born citizens from voting. Or it can be used to create a flurry of content, even from fake local news outlets, to inflame existing challenges at the polls.

And there’s an internal risk for election offices. Staff could receive a call that sounds like the election administrator asking them to change a voting process. Sophisticated phishing emails could dupe staffers into allowing access to social media accounts or sensitive voter information.

“It’s misinformation on steroids,” said former Kentucky Republican Secretary of State Trey Grayson, who is a member of the National Task Force on Election Crises. “We’ve been dealing with misinformation, disinformation threats for the last few years. But this is just another level.”

State and local election officials are already spending a good deal of time fighting disinformation. Secretaries of state are using #TrustedInfo2024 on social media in promoting the importance of going to trusted sources for election information. AI platform ChatGPT has started directing users with election-related questions to CanIVote.org, a website run by the National Association of Secretaries of State.

It’s a “constant challenge,” said Riley Vetterkind, public information officer for the Wisconsin Elections Commission. The state agency gives municipal election clerks templates for news releases, a calendar of suggested social media posts, webinars for communications strategies and email bulletins on existing disinformation.

In Colorado, election officials have aggressively targeted lies that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and that election systems are vulnerable to substantial levels of fraud.

“We have decided that we’re not going to be a backstop for BS anymore,” said Matt Crane, executive director of the Colorado County Clerks Association. “We’re going to be very aggressive in the public square.”

The challenges build off one another, said Mark Lindeman, policy and strategy director for Verified Voting, a nonprofit that advocates for paper voting records, post-election audits and election security.

But there is hope, he added. It’s easy for things to go wrong in elections, but it’s hard to bring down entire voting systems.

“One of my concerns is that we’re psyching ourselves out, scaring ourselves about all the things that could possibly go wrong,” Lindeman said. “We lose sight sometimes of how we can prepare to meet those challenges and to explain to people that we have met those challenges.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

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LOUISVILLE, KY - JANUARY 24: A teacher waves to her students as they get off the bus at Carter Traditional Elementary School on January 24, 2022 in Louisville, Kentucky. Students in the district are returning to in-person class after two weeks of Non-Traditional Instruction (NTI) due to staffing issues caused by a surge of the COVID-19 omicron variant. (Photo by Jon Cherry/Getty Images)

Young people may be digital natives, but many of them aren’t equipped to deal with the increasing onslaught of disinformation and deepfakes appearing in their social media feeds.

A growing number of states think they have an antidote: media literacy education.

The goal of media literacy, sometimes called digital citizenship or information literacy, is to help students think critically about the news that is presented to them. Media-literate students also should be able to separate fact from fiction in political messaging, advertisements, television shows and social media posts.

Perhaps most importantly, supporters say, young people should be able to infer why someone posted an Instagram reel or TikTok video, and to weigh the potential consequences of spreading it around.

Over the past five years, states including California, Delaware, Illinois, New Jersey and Texas have enacted laws that require public school students to learn media literacy during their time in school. Despite outside criticism from some conservative scholars, all passed with bipartisan support.

“As technology changes, society has to change, and a big part of that is education changing,” said California Assemblymember Marc Berman, a Democrat who last year sponsored his state’s new law.

Berman pointed to the 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol, fueled by the lie that Donald Trump won the 2020 election, as well as anti-vaccination conspiracy theories and Holocaust denialism as the consequences of a lack of media literacy.

But encouraging media literacy in an increasingly polarized political environment will be a “messy” challenge, said Paul Mihailidis, a professor of civic media and journalism at Emerson College in Boston.

“It’s not a very apolitical thing,” Mihailidis said. “When you teach people how to spot disinformation and how to navigate different online spaces, inevitably that wades into people looking at certain content one way and certain content another way.”

California’s law calls on the state’s top education authorities to include media literacy in curriculums for the four core subjects — English, science, math and social studies — when the state next updates them in the coming years and pays for the work.

Berman acknowledged that California’s $38 billion budget shortfall could complicate efforts to fully fund media literacy programs, while asserting that doing so is “absolutely something that we need.”

Young people have grown up with social media, but it is evolving with the spread of misinformation and disinformation — and artificial intelligence has the potential to make it even worse, said Alvin Lee, a junior at Stanford University and executive director of the student advocacy group GENup, which pushed for the California measure.

“It’s not just about understanding what is not true or true on social media,” said Lee, who is studying political science and wants to work in education policy. “It’s about being a literate citizen.”

But some Republican lawmakers and conservative thinkers say the media literacy bills coming out of state legislatures are vague and promote “woke” ideologies, pointing to some suggested curriculums that advocate for a more equitable and inclusive society. They worry that some of the measures will undermine parents’ ability to instill their values in their children.

“Critical media literacy seeks to undermine what it sees as the dominant institutions of Western capitalist society,” John D. Sailer, a senior fellow at the National Association of Scholars, a conservative think tank, wrote in City Journal in 2021. “Changing society is a clear goal.”

Bipartisan efforts

Washington state lawmakers are likely to pass bipartisan legislation this year that would send money to schools so they can evaluate and improve existing media literacy courses. The exact amount would be decided later.

Since a law was enacted in 2016, Washington state schools have embedded media literacy across curriculums. If passed, this latest measure would boost that education, said Democratic state Sen. Marko Liias, one of the co-sponsors of the bill, which passed the state Senate last March.

The bill would set up grants for teachers to receive training in media literacy; the state House is set to debate it in the coming months. As in other states, the bill in Washington has enjoyed strong bipartisan support.

“This has been an effort where Democrats and Republicans have come together to say, ‘We need to make sure students are better prepared for the future of technology and our information landscape,’” Liias said. “That’s been really important for us in the state to keep making progress.”

Only four of the state Senate’s 20 Republican members voted against the measure. One of the dissenters, state Sen. Jim McCune, said the bill leaves too many unanswered questions.

“It’s another mandate on education,” McCune told Stateline. “Most people learn media literacy in their life, but the bill is very vague about what they’re going to teach. Schools already are failing across the state of Washington.”

If students need help recognizing disinformation online, they should ask their parents, McCune added.

But that misses the point of media literacy education, said Erin McNeill, CEO and founder of Media Literacy Now, a Massachusetts-based nonprofit that has pushed state legislatures to boost mandates and funding for the effort.

“Media literacy is about learning the questions to ask; it’s never about telling students which is the right source,” she said. “They’re not gaining any skills that way.”

At least 19 states have some media literacy education in their public schools, according to her group. There are active bills in Indiana, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Hampshire and Oklahoma, with both Republican and Democratic sponsors.

Media literacy education in practice

When Saba Presley’s middle school students learn the electromagnetic spectrum in her mixed-grade science class in Albuquerque, New Mexico, she weaves in media literacy lessons.

As the sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade students at Mountain Mahogany Community School learn different wavelengths, Presley asks them to simultaneously examine persuasion techniques that the news media uses to engage consumers. Then, using mnemonic devices students created to remember the spectrum between gamma and radio waves, they make posters and advertisements to convince their peers that their memory method is the best.

On one poster, for example, a student capitalizes the first letter of different wavelengths: “Gentlefolks, eXcessive Usage of Vegemite Is Majorly Robotic.” The poster adds at the bottom, “The best mnemonic device to remember electromagnetic wavelengths, unless you’re Australian.” The poster also shows a robot spreading vegemite on toast.

The lesson is a hit with students, Presley said.

“If you teach students how these manipulation tactics or persuasion tactics are used in media, and teach them how to use them, then they’re going to be able to have their eye out for them,” Presley said. “It’s not just understanding the information. It’s being a skeptic.”

Over her six years of teaching science to middle school students, she has noticed their media engagement skyrocket. But, she said, they are becoming “passive consumers,” taking in what they see on TikTok or a Google search as truth without thinking about the creator, the intended audience and how the creator might benefit from convincing them.

Presley created her lesson plan after taking a seven-month professional development course provided by a company called Media Savvy Citizens in 2022, which was offered to middle school teachers throughout New Mexico. The course encouraged teachers to integrate media literacy into existing curriculum, instead of it being a stand-alone course.

Presley hesitated, though, when asked whether media literacy education should be mandatory. If New Mexico were to someday require media literacy, teachers should be given in-depth training and resources to integrate those lessons effectively; they’re already asked to do so much, she said.

Indeed, a paper published in 2021 by the Rand Corporation found that while media literacy is taught in most schools nationwide, the instruction is uneven and “diverges considerably” among classrooms. Teachers also reported they often lacked instructional resources and training.

Implementation has been scattershot, which can contribute to inequities in what students are taught, especially in high-poverty schools, said Alice Huguet, a policy researcher at the Rand Corporation and one of the paper’s authors. Getting legislation on the books is only the beginning; implementation can make or break any policy.

“Even within the same states, we saw that teachers had very different experiences with support for teaching media literacy,” Huguet wrote in an email. “While I absolutely think that education should be tailored to context to an extent, leaving an important subject like this completely open to interpretation — or to not being delivered at all — is risky.”

In Illinois, every high school student must take media literacy lessons. But they can come in many different forms, said Yonty Friesem, an associate professor of communications at Columbia College Chicago, part of a team of educators that developed the media literacy resources and curriculum for Illinois high schools.

He pointed to examples throughout the state, including one teacher who examines the history of hip-hop music and has students evaluate rap from the 1980s and compare it to what they listen to now. Another teacher asks her science students to look at who wrote an experiment’s instructions and evaluate the intended audience.

“Since we’re using media in every part of our life, it shouldn’t be separated,” Friesem said. “We need to have those literacy skills across disciplines.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

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One man, young homeless sitting on the street and begging. Getty Images

SAN DIEGO — Tracy Bennett has packed up and moved her tent and possessions so many times when the city periodically clears her sidewalk encampment, she jokes she could run her own moving company.

The black canopy that she’s wrapped in blue tarps and filled with blankets, food, a coloring book and the rest of her belongings, stood on a sidewalk on a Friday morning this month, a few blocks from the Gaslamp Quarter, a downtown San Diego nightlife hub. Her shelter had a bit of holiday flair: On the corner of her tent, near its entrance, sat a stuffed elf and two red stockings tied in green and red tinsel.

But a couple feet down from her small Christmas decoration, a city worker taped a neon green notice to her tent telling her and the rest of the homeless encampment that in 24 hours they would have to break camp and move, or their belongings would be impounded or thrown away.

The sidewalk encampment had around 30 mismatched orange, blue, gray and red tents, tarps tied to parking lot fences, packed carts and a community of people — some old, some young, some with a variety of physical disabilities or mental illnesses — sitting on curbs, bicycles or walkers. It ran along an intersection that had one portable toilet, a women’s shelter and several social workers assisting any way they could.

Bennett, 54, folded blankets outside her tent, one hand on the leash of Mamacita, a friendly pit bull wagging her tail at the activity.

She said she is used to these city-mandated cleanups; they’ve happened countless times in the three years she’s been on this corner and in the seven years she’s been without a home in what might be America’s most expensive city. Each time, she gathers her stuff and carries it across the street with the help of friends. When the city crew and police leave, she’s back, along with her unhoused neighbors.

“It’s redundant, stupid and a waste of taxpayers’ dollars,” she said. “It doesn’t do anything to fix the problem. It doesn’t even put a Band-Aid on a bullet hole.

“We’re not bad people. We’re just in a bad circumstance.”

The next morning, a frantic energy crackled through the encampment. Residents unsheathed tent poles and folded up blankets and tarps as a dozen city workers in white hazmat suits began to sweep up all the bottles, garbage, feces, needles and tents left behind, stuffing the refuse into the back of a white garbage truck.

Two police officers stood by, encouraging people to hustle before the cleaning crew reached them. People gathered their tents and belongings in carts, on bikes or in their arms, and left. Workers power-washed the sidewalk with water and disinfectant. Bennett stood by with two friends, watched the cleanup unfold and ate a bag of Cheez-Its as a garbage truck crunched tent polls in its rear-end compactor.

This scene plays out in cities across the country.

More than 653,000 Americans are experiencing homelessness, according to a count released this month by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, a 12% increase from last year. Among the people experiencing homelessness, 64% are unsheltered.

As tent encampments continue to dot urban landscapes — strewn around parks, along sidewalks, lining highways or sometimes abutting schools — many cities have increased their sweeps, some governors have announced funding to clear encampments, and several states have outlawed the tent communities altogether.

Without significant investment and solutions coming from federal and state governments, local leaders are on their own to manage this crisis, said Samantha Batko, a principal research associate in the Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center at the Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.

“Sweeps are a way to diminish the visibility in a specific area — not overall, but in a specific area — in the short term,” she said.

City leaders from Minneapolis to Las Vegas say the sweeps are intended to reduce health hazards for those living in the camps and for the surrounding community, while also connecting homeless people with case workers and shelters. A rise in complaints from homeowners who worry about their property values and safety have added political pressure to move the camps out of commercial and residential areas.

Housing experts and homeless advocates argue such sweeps are cruel, displace people from needed social services and community, risk the loss of their few possessions and don’t solve the root of the problem, which is the need for more affordable housing.

While cities and the unhoused wait for that housing to emerge, elected leaders are trying to find ways to alleviate the uncomfortable visuals of countless rows of their constituents sheltered in tents. They are greenlighting more sweeps, going to the courts to expand their power to clear camps and adopting “safe” camping options such as city-designated camps.

Cities embrace sweeps

In California, home to nearly a third of the nation’s homeless population, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom last month announced $300 million in grants for local jurisdictions to help clear homeless encampments, building on the $415 million that his administration already has spent on sweeping camps and housing people.

Touting the 5,679 encampments the state has cleared since July 2021, Newsom said camps “are not safe for the people living in them, or for community members around them.”

Local leaders agree.

“It is completely inhumane to allow people to perish on the sidewalks in squalor,” San Diego Councilmember Stephen Whitburn said in an interview at his City Hall office. “We have an obligation to get people out of the encampments and to provide a better option for them.”

Whitburn, a Democrat, sees the problem every day, as homeless people congregate in the plaza behind City Hall and the adjoining sidewalks in downtown San Diego.

In June, he shepherded through an ordinance that bans camping within two blocks of schools and shelters, in parks and along waterways. It also prohibits camping on sidewalks if there are shelter beds available. The camping ban accompanies local initiatives that seek to add more shelter beds and affordable housing. Before the camping ban, the city used sidewalk encroachment laws to ticket and clear homeless encampments.

Camping bans have attracted interest in other cities, such as Portland, Oregon, where a ban went into effect last month. In cities such as Denver and Houston, homeless encampment sweeps come with an option to move indoors into hotels or other shelters.

San Diego city workers in hazmat suits clean up refuse left behind at a homeless encampment in December, including some tents. Matt Vasilogambros/Stateline

Since San Diego’s camping ban went into effect in July, there are 1,200 fewer unhoused people downtown — a 45% decline, according to the San Diego Downtown Partnership.

But the local homeless crisis is still acute; homelessness in San Diego County rose 22% last year, especially affecting women, older adults and veterans. For every 10 people who found housing and exited homelessness in San Diego over the past year, 16 became homeless, according to the Regional Task Force on Homelessness.

Local housing advocates have lambasted the camping ban. They say the city is criminalizing homelessness and displacing people from familiar communities.

People in homeless encampments often look after one another or keep an eye on someone’s possessions when they have to go to a doctor’s appointment, renew their food stamp cards, snag a bus pass or run to the grocery store, said Janis Wilds, a volunteer homeless advocate with Housing 4 the Homeless, a local nonprofit that runs a shelter for older people.

“It’s causing people to become mobile,” she said. “And though encampments are detrimental to the wealthy that have to see poverty, they’re actually helpful to the people who are in them. The police are just telling people, ‘Just go somewhere, just go somewhere else. Don’t be here.’ But there is absolutely nowhere for people to go.”

That mobile lifestyle may work for people who are young and don’t have a disability, she said; it doesn’t work for many others. Often, it puts at risk women who could add a lock to the zippers of their tents at night and prevent being sexually assaulted, said Wilds, who hands out food, hygiene supplies, tents and sleeping bags on the street twice a week.

But Whitburn doesn’t buy the argument by a “vocal minority” who say the city is somehow criminalizing people experiencing homelessness.

“Most people think that it is perfectly reasonable to say if we have a suitable bed or other option available for you, then you shouldn’t be allowed to just pitch a tent on the sidewalk,” he said. “The status quo is not acceptable.”

Ongoing legal fights to expand sweeps

The San Diego City Council voted to join cities from Milwaukee to Seattle to Honolulu that are coming together to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to give them more authority to conduct sweeps.

While a 2018 decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals says cities cannot enforce anti-camping ordinances if they do not have enough shelter capacity, it hasn’t stopped municipalities from pursuing camping bans.

Cities have raced to sign on to an amicus brief in favor of more city power to clear camps. Even Newsom, in California, has chimed in, writing that judges have “paralyzed” cities’ response to clearing encampments. The California State Association of Counties and the League of California Cities have filed their own brief asking the court to give counties and cities more power to conduct sweeps.

The U.S. Supreme Court could decide next month whether to take the case.

At the same time, some states are trying to prohibit encampments. Over the past two years, Missouri, Tennessee and Texas have enacted laws banning public camping on public land. This year, Georgia lawmakers passed a law requiring cities and counties to enforce existing bans on public camping.

Earlier this week, the Missouri Supreme Court struck down the state’s law that banned sleeping on public land over a technical issue with how the law was written.

Arizona Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs vetoed a proposed public camping ban bill this year, writing in her veto letter that the legislation did not address root causes for homelessness or offer alternative paths.

Phoenix recently was ordered by a judge to clear one of the biggest encampment zones in the country. The zone had nearly 1,000 people camped there, according to news outlets. The city said 718 people were offered services and 585 of those accepted placement at an indoor location.

Anti-camping laws are about public safety, not criminalization, said Bryan Sunderland, executive director at the Cicero Institute, a conservative think tank that offers model policies for public camping bans.

“It’s a tragic situation for the people left on the streets,” he said. “Leaving people on the streets is not a compassionate situation. It is not a good thing. It’s not good for the community or those who are homeless.”

He suggested short-term shelters, where rehabilitation and treatment for substance use is prioritized.

As cities and states try to expand their sweeps policies, local American Civil Liberties Union chapters have filed lawsuits against Albuquerque, Honolulu, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Seattle. Chapters have sent warnings to city leaders elsewhere.

Lawyers for the ACLU argue these sweeps violate constitutional protections that prevent cruel and unusual punishment and the seizure of property by the government.

“They are displacing homeless folks, giving them no real alternatives of where they can be and at the same time destroying their belongings summarily without any form of due process,” said John Do, a senior staff attorney for the Racial and Economic Justice Program at the ACLU of Northern California, who is leading the lawsuit in San Francisco. That case is in the middle of discovery, and the trial is set to begin next October.

‘By every measure, the homeless sweeps failed’

Across the country from San Diego, on a crowded Metropolitan Transportation Authority commuter train into downtown Manhattan, 54-year-old Geraldo Jones is trying to perfect his singing pitch. For the past two years on most mornings, Jones sings Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” to commuters in hopes of earning a few dollars.

It’s a subway hustle that can earn him a few meals for the week.

“My voice is all I have left,” said Jones, who has been experiencing chronic homelessness since 2015. “Sometimes, I’ll make enough to get a few burgers for the next few days.”

In August 2022, his home — a tentlike setup in Washington Square Park — was swept away by the New York Police Department as a part of encampment cleanups implemented by Democratic Mayor Eric Adams.

In addition to losing the home that had been his most consistent living space since 2021, Jones said his belongings, including photos of his deceased wife and contacts for the city’s homeless providers, were destroyed.

“That was my home. My memories. All I had left. To others it may look like trash in their public space or mud in their tourist trap, but it was my home,” said Jones. “Where do they want me to go? I’ve been moving from awning to awning, subway station to subway station.”

Jones can carry a tune. But few commuters drop a few dollars and cents into his “coin purse,” a 7-Eleven Big Gulp cup.

New York City’s encampment sweeps led to the forcible removal of 2,308 people from their outdoor spaces from March to November 2022, according to an audit from the New York City Comptroller’s Office. Of those, only 90 stayed in shelters for more than one day. As of January, 47 people remained in shelters, and just three people secured permanent housing.

“The evidence is clear: by every measure, the homeless sweeps failed,” said Comptroller Brad Lander in the report.

Homeless encampment sweeps simply do not work, said Steve Berg, chief policy officer for the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

“The idea that you take people who are homeless and scatter them someplace else around whatever city they’re in, it just makes it harder for them to maintain whatever relationships they had with any sort of provider that was trying to help them,” he said.

While people of all backgrounds experience homelessness, advocacy groups such as the National Health Care for the Homeless Council have found that sweeps disproportionately impact non-white people and people with disabilities.

“Homelessness is also a racial equity issue,” said Etel Haxhiaj, the council’s senior policy manager. “One thing I want lawmakers to note is that the people who are being swept away in these sweeps are often people of color who already have a hurdle in accessing housing.”

Several academic papers have found that homeless encampment sweeps can lead to adverse mental and physical health effects for displaced people. On top of that, sweeps come with a high price tag.

A 2020 federal report examined sweeps from nine U.S. cities — Chicago; Fresno, California; Houston; Las Vegas; Minneapolis; Philadelphia; Portland, Oregon; San Jose, California; and Tacoma, Washington. The report found that those sweeps were expensive, costing cities between $1,672 and $6,208 per unsheltered individual per year.

Washington Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee recently warned that the state’s program that clears homeless encampments and helps put people into housing is running out of money.

Inslee is asking legislators to approve $140 million for homelessness programs, after allocating $143 million last year, as a part of recent budget proposal. Of the 1,034 people living in the encampments who accepted housing as part of this initiative, 816 are still in the housing offered by the state, according to a Department of Commerce database.

As the Urban Institute put it, homeless encampment sweeps are “draining” municipal budgets.

But seeing that outdoor living is one of the only options for a growing U.S. homeless population, some cities are looking to allow encampments on their own terms.

The ‘safe sleeping’ alternative

On the southern end of Balboa Park — San Diego’s 1,200-acre central park — and cushioned between the Naval Medical Center and Interstate 5, 136 red ice-fishing tents sit on each of three flattened sections of a rusty dirt hill. Across the street, another 136 tents have been erected in a city operations parking lot.

San Diego, nicknamed “America’s Finest City,” now offers what it’s calling “safe sleeping” campsites on publicly owned land. Up to 750 people can stay here each night.

The sites have become a beacon for people who don’t like shelters, want a modicum of privacy and have sought some assistance and access to social services, said Teresa Smith, CEO of Dreams for Change, one of the nonprofits that are helping to operate the sites.

“They can live their lives in an environment that provides the things that we’re looking for around dignity, privacy and, in many ways, client empowerment,” she said.

Sacramento, California, has operated a similar site for the past two years, holding 60 tents. Smith said she had phone conversations with that site’s organizers before the San Diego site opened.

In Utah, Salt Lake City opened the state’s first sanctioned homeless encampment, offering pods in the shape of tiny houses that can hold two unhoused people and that are searched regularly for drugs and alcohol.

The San Diego site uses ice-fishing tents, which lack a bottom tarp layer because they’re traditionally staked by anglers atop the frozen lakes of northern states. The tents, instead, rest on 4-inch wooden platforms off the ground.

They can hold two people, and they come with sleeping bags. Residents receive breakfast and dinner and have access to showers, laundry facilities and power outlets to charge their phones. There’s also a shuttle that can take people downtown or to public transportation hubs.

The sites are home to a revolving door of social service providers offering medical help, general case management and mental health and harm reduction assistance. Site officials are trying to keep existing encampments together at the new city-designated sites to help foster community.

Darhonda Newbill, an Illinois native who has been without housing off-and-on for nine years, spent five nights at one of the safe camping locations. But she said she is not sure whether she’ll come back.

“It’s just very cold at night,” said Newbill, 36. “It has a big opening at the bottom. That’s more ventilation.”

Standing with Bennett and another friend as city workers cleared the homeless encampment in downtown San Diego earlier this month, Newbill said she felt like she’s being made a criminal because she lives on the street.

“We just don’t really have any choices,” she said.

(Sequeira reported from New York.)

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

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Ballot opening lead Eldon Miller works at the King County Elections headquarters, Friday, Nov. 17, 2023, in Renton, Wash. The office began stocking Narcan, the nasal spray version of overdose-reversal drug naloxone, after receiving a letter laced with fentanyl in the summer and was evacuated the day after Election Day after receiving a similar envelope. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Hundreds of election workers in Washington state’s second-largest county were busy opening mail-in ballots earlier this month when one of them came across a plain white envelope. As she cut it open, white powder leaked out.

She carefully took off her gloves, put them down, backed away and called her supervisor. Workers evacuated the building and waited for the Tacoma Fire Department to arrive. While first responders tested the substance, Democratic and Republican observers gathered at the emergency management center looking at security feeds of the election office to ensure there wasn’t any ballot tampering.

Pierce County Auditor Linda Farmer, the nonpartisan election official for the metropolitan area south of Seattle, said she felt lucky no one got hurt.

“We’ve got a really strong, resilient workforce,” she said, choking up in an interview with Stateline. “Nobody left. They were a little shaken up, understandably unsure of what was going on. But everybody marched right into that building, and said, ‘Oh, heck no, you are not disrupting the democratic process.’”

Pierce County was one of four Washington state county election offices to get such a letter that day, with some receiving the narcotic fentanyl and others baking soda.

Local election offices in California, Georgia, Nevada and Oregon also received powder-filled letters around the early November election. The FBI and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service are investigating the letters. No charges have been filed.

Since the 2020 presidential election, state and local election officials nationwide have been bombarded with threats, as lies perpetuated by former President Donald Trump and his allies around “rigged” elections have fueled conspiracy theories and inspired violent reactions to the bureaucrats and temporary workers who run the United States’ democratic process.

Facing ongoing threats, election workers have shored up their safety protocols and used state and federal grant money to build more secure facilities. They have lobbied state legislators to add new protections for election workers and increase penalties for those who harass, intimidate or threaten them. This year, lawmakers in several states heeded those calls.

But going into next year’s presidential election, local election workers are visible in a way they never wanted. Officials are leaving in droves, and the brain drain could lead to more errors, providing fuel for conspiracy theories.

As of late August, the U.S. Justice Department’s Election Threats Task Force had charged 14 people with making threats to election workers and political candidates since the task force was created in 2021, so far leading to nine convictions that came with yearslong criminal sentences.

These attacks are terrorism, said Kim Wyman, who previously served as the Republican secretary of state for Washington and as a senior election security adviser for the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

“These are attacks on our democratic institutions,” said Wyman, who is now a senior fellow for elections at the Washington, D.C.-based think tank Bipartisan Policy Center. “These are people trying to break the election system for whatever reason. And we have a job to do. We need to guard against that and fight back.”

States add new protections

This year, state lawmakers in Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico and Oklahoma enacted new protections for election workers and increased criminal penalties for those who threaten or interfere in their work.

Those added to the protections that lawmakers in California, Colorado, Maine, New Hampshire, Oregon, Vermont and Washington imposed last year.

In Michigan, people who harass election officials now can face up to 93 days in prison and a fine of up to $500 for their first offense. A second offense can lead to a $1,000 fine and a year in prison. Subsequent offenses would bump up to felony charges from misdemeanors.

Michigan state Rep. Kara Hope, the Democrat who sponsored the legislation, said she is disappointed threatening behavior has been normalized.

“We can’t have people afraid to work elections,” she told Stateline. “My hope with this bill is that it will give people peace of mind.”

In Minnesota, a new civil penalty for intimidating or interfering with election workers carries a $1,000 fine.

The provision was part of a broader voting bill that included the adoption of automatic voter registration and a permanent absentee voter list. The measure also allows 16- and 17-year-olds to pre-register to vote. The legislation passed along party lines, with no Republican support. Republicans criticized the package for not being bipartisan.

Democratic state Rep. Emma Greenman, who sponsored the bill in her chamber, said the disinformation associated with the 2020 presidential election could threaten workers’ safety.

“I don’t think people draw the logical consequences when they talk about a stolen election,” she said. “What it means is, ‘I am putting people in my community, I’m putting public servants and volunteers at risk.’

“It’s really scary.”

In a February survey by the Minnesota Association of County Officers, more than half of the local election workers who responded said they or someone associated with the elections office faced intimidation while performing their duties.

Nationally, election officials are expressing similar concerns.

Staving off an election worker exodus

The Brennan Center for Justice, a nonprofit voting rights organization housed at New York University School of Law, estimates election offices need $300 million in federal funding over the next five years for increased security. That money could be used to fortify buildings, build more secure ballot-counting facilities and add new security training.

A third of local election officials nationwide have faced threats, intimidation or abuse, according to an April survey by the Brennan Center. The voting rights organization conducted 852 interviews of local election officials — around half of whom said they are worried about their and their colleagues’ personal safety.

Some county election offices around the country have begun stocking Narcan, a nasal spray that reverses an overdose of fentanyl.

There is increasing awareness of these threats to election workers, said Liz Howard, deputy director of the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program.

When Howard served as the deputy commissioner for the Virginia Department of Elections, she said, she made some unpopular decisions, but she never received death threats from voters. The landscape has changed, she said.

“Election officials are increasingly preparing for all hazards,” said Howard. “As the threat environment has changed, their preparations have evolved as well.”

Some election workers are re-imagining their office’s physical security — building new and more secure facilities and adding technology such as surveillance equipment and panic buttons. But others are opting to leave the field altogether.

Since the 2020 presidential election, 60% of chief local election officials in the Western half of the U.S. (Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming) have left their jobs, according to Issue One, an advocacy group focused on strengthening democracy.

Michael Beckel, the group’s research director, worries the exodus could lead to workers who make more errors and are less resilient to public or political pressures.

“This is a five-alarm fire,” he said. “It’s a huge loss of institutional knowledge.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

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Thousands of President Donald Trump’s supporters storm the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021. Courts are considering whether Trump’s involvement in the riot should disqualify him from state ballots in 2024. (Spencer Platt | Getty Images)

Some scholars say a little-known, Civil War-era provision in the U.S. Constitution should prohibit former President Donald Trump from appearing on state ballots in next year’s presidential election. But it seems increasingly unlikely that he will be disqualified.

Courts in Colorado, Michigan, New Jersey and elsewhere are considering whether Trump engaged in insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, and should, therefore, be kept off the 2024 primary and general election presidential ballots. But two months before the first primary, it’s a question with no clear consensus among legal scholars, and one that state election officials have been hesitant to weigh and that courts have been reluctant to entertain.

“It’s only going to have real meaning if it goes to the courts,” said David Becker, founder and executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, a nonpartisan organization that advises local election officials nationwide.

“There’s also a very understandable reluctance of courts to put themselves between the voters and their choices,” he said. “And there’s going to be a very, very high bar that needs to be met for a court to say we’re going to take this choice out of the hands of voters.”

Last week, the Minnesota Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit from a left-leaning organization that sought to keep Trump off the state’s GOP primary ballot next year. But the ruling came down to a technicality, as the justices noted that there is no state law that restricts political parties from offering an ineligible candidate for higher office.

Notably, the ruling did not address the constitutional question at the core of the argument: whether Trump violated a provision of the 14th Amendment that prevents those who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” from holding public office when he stoked a mob that overran the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

In writing for the Minnesota court, Chief Justice Natalie Hudson said the ruling left open the possibility that a new lawsuit could keep Trump off the general election ballot.

While he is disappointed by the ruling, Ron Fein, legal director for the petitioner, the Massachusetts-based advocacy group Free Speech For People, told Stateline the legal fight is far from over and left open the possibility of further legal action.

These legal fights are not just about a technicality in the Constitution, he said; it’s a post-Civil War provision added “after a bloody lesson learned at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives.” The lesson, he said, is “that if someone breaks their oath to support the Constitution and then rebels against it, then if they are allowed back into power, they will do the same again, if not worse.”

Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for Trump, said in a statement to the press that these “ballot challenges are nothing more than strategic, un-Constitutional attempts to interfere with the election.” The former president denies any wrongdoing on Jan. 6, 2021, and he has not been charged with insurrection, his allies have noted.

Ongoing cases

Several cases around the country remain in motion.

In Colorado, a case brought by the nonprofit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington concluded oral arguments earlier this month. A Denver District Court judge is expected to issue a ruling by Nov. 17.

Two Michigan lawsuits, one of which was brought by Free Speech For People, are ongoing. There is another case in New Jersey, brought by a voter.

However, other cases have been stopped before reaching trial.

In Florida, a U.S. district judge dismissed a lawsuit in August, arguing the plaintiffs lacked standing because they had not suffered injury. A New Hampshire federal judge last month dismissed a similar case to remove Trump from the state’s presidential primary ballot, also finding the plaintiff lacked standing and noting the case presented a political question, rather than a legal one.

The efforts to disqualify Trump, citing Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, began in earnest this summer, after groups, including Free Speech For People, began pressuring secretaries of state, who run state election systems, to keep him off the ballot.

Around the same time, legal scholars from both ends of the political spectrum began a public push to justify invoking the clause, which hasn’t been used since the Reconstruction period after the Civil War.

These court proceedings are new territory and it’s putting a lot of pressure on judges to decide on a question of unsettled law, said Derek Muller, a professor at Notre Dame Law School and author of an amicus brief on the Minnesota case that did not side with any party.

“There’s just a lot of uncertainty because of the complexity and novelty of these claims,” Muller said in an interview with Stateline. “We just don’t necessarily know where it’s going to go.”

Reluctant courts

The courts have thus far shown a reluctance to interfere with the electoral process, said Marshall Tanick, a lawyer in Minnesota’s Twin Cities who specializes, in part, in constitutional law. He added that the insurrection argument to keep Trump off the ballot is a challenging one to make since it’s complex and could be seen as disenfranchising voters.

The case in Minnesota was “a trainwreck,” Tanick said. Not only did the petitioners wait too long to file in September, but justices decided on the petition after hearing only 70 minutes of oral arguments, instead of a trial with evidence and witnesses, as in Colorado.

The Colorado case was “obviously much more developed,” he said, and has a better chance at succeeding. But, he added, if that case succeeds and eventually makes its way to the U.S. Supreme Court through the appeals process, the conservative majority is not likely to go along with removing Trump from the ballot.

“These cases are going to show that the reality here is a lot different than the academics’ ruminations,” Tanick said.

It sets an “extremely dangerous” precedent to have judges decide who can appear on a ballot, said Josh Blackman, a professor at South Texas College of Law Houston, who co-authored a paper that argued the insurrection clause does not apply to Trump because he is not an “officer of the United States,” as the language of the 14th Amendment reads.

“What we’re talking about here is telling people that you can’t vote for the candidate of your choice,” he told Stateline. “This would be the single biggest disenfranchisement in modern history.”

Both Democratic and Republican secretaries of state also have been reluctant to weigh in on Trump’s eligibility.

Georgia Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that “anyone who believes in democracy must let the voters decide.” He added doing otherwise would embolden Trump’s claims of a “rigged” election process. Similarly, Arizona Democratic Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said in October he does not have the authority to keep Trump off the ballot.

State election officials have acted “incredibly prudently,” said Becker, of the Center for Election Innovation & Research.

While he said there are strong arguments for disqualifying Trump from the ballot because he “engaged in insurrection” during the 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol, this isn’t a “cut-and-dry” case, such as ruling whether a 23-year-old is too young to run for president.

Regardless of how the cases are determined in several states, he said, it is crucial that the appellate process moves quickly enough to get the question into the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court. The legal question is important to resolve before voters start casting ballots in the presidential primaries early next year, both for election officials who must design and print ballots and voters who will be making their decision, he said.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

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New York Governor Kathy Hochul visits the Western Wall in Jerusalem on Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2023. Hochul’s father died overnight while she was touring wartime Israel, with the teary-eyed governor slipping a note grieving the loss into Jerusalem’s Western Wall holy site. (Shlomi Amsalem/Office of Governor Kathy Hochul)

Eleven days after Hamas terrorists poured into southern Israel from the Gaza Strip, killing at least 1,400 people and kidnapping more than 230, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul arrived in Israel with a photo of a Long Island native in hand to give to the president of the besieged country.

Hochul, the Democratic governor of a state that has the largest Jewish population in the world outside of Israel, told the media in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attack that she wanted to “bear witness” to the tragedy, show New York’s “unwavering” support of Israel and make sure that missing New Yorkers such as Omer Neutra — an Israeli tank commander believed to be one of the people taken captive by the Islamic extremist group that controls Gaza — are not forgotten.

“I needed to comfort a nation,” she told MSNBC after she returned, describing the harrowing, bloody sights of a kibbutz that had been attacked. She had walked the streets of the community in a flak jacket, surrounded by Israeli security forces.

“There are so many people that I know that are suffering,” she added. “Everybody knew somebody. Everybody experienced real pain, and I needed to go over there to let people know that we stand with Israel.”

Governors across the country have shown overwhelming support for Israel following this month’s Hamas attack, during which terrorists murdered mostly civilians, targeting them at a music festival and in their homes. Responses have ranged from strongly worded statements, to lowering flags to half-staff, to lighting state capitols in blue and white in honor of the Israeli flag, to attending rallies for Jewish groups, to spending millions on Israel Bonds, to chartering flights from Israel to the U.S., to visiting Israel itself.

Rarely do governors of both parties almost universally agree. But supporting Israel is popular among Americans in both parties — and historically it has been a prerequisite for any governor with presidential ambitions.

While governors hold limited international power and have little ability to shape American foreign policy, they do speak on behalf of an entire state’s population, said Chris Tuttle, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonpartisan think tank. For foreign leaders, forging ties with a U.S. elected leader who represents millions of voices can be an asset. For governors, such relationships can boost their domestic political standing, he said.

“For a lot of governors, this is not their final chapter,” he said. “And it’s tough for governors to say, ‘I have foreign policy street cred,’ in a presidential election. So, this is definitely an investment in their potential political future.”

For most governors, supporting Israel is a relatively noncontroversial stand to take: Seventy-one percent of Americans, including a large majority of both Democrats and Republicans, think protecting Israel should be a very important or somewhat important goal of U.S. foreign policy, according to an Economist/YouGov poll taken after the Oct. 7 terrorist attack.

Evidence of the atrocities committed in the attack, including the murder and kidnapping of children, young women and Holocaust survivors — much of it filmed by the terrorists and shared on social media — elicited a visceral reaction from many politicians. In an emotional speech in Tel Aviv, President Joe Biden called the attacks “unadulterated evil.”

But the quick and firm support for Israel by governors has left many of their Muslim constituents feeling abandoned. They say their state leaders are ignoring the growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza and giving short shrift to the thousands of people, including many children, who have been killed in the airstrikes Israel launched in preparation for a ground invasion to crush Hamas. Meanwhile, many younger Democrats and those in the party’s left wing are increasingly critical of Israel’s response.

Playing an international role

Hochul met with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog, toured Jerusalem, prayed at the Western Wall and visited hospital victims.

It was her first international trip as governor — a “solidarity mission,” as Hochul called it, that was celebrated by many of her Jewish constituents back home.

Traveling to Israel, meeting with victims and hearing their stories to share with Americans back home was “very powerful,” said Noam Gilboord, interim CEO of the nonprofit Jewish Community Relations Council of New York. Hochul’s decision to visit Israel showed Jewish New Yorkers that she cares about them, especially as they feel the threat of potential violence in their own communities, he said.

“It’s personal for us,” he said in an interview with Stateline. “This show of solidarity, the show of leadership was very important.”

But some in New York were hurt by Hochul’s initial message to Palestinian Americans after Israel declared war on Hamas and started its bombardment of Gaza. Hochul called on “law-abiding Palestinians to reject Hamas” but did not offer sympathy to constituents who may have relatives or friends who died in Gaza or who are experiencing the humanitarian crisis there.

Democratic Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani said Hochul’s statements — and trip to Israel —were “dehumanizing,” “willfully ignorant” and “disgusting.”

“For her, these constituents, their concerns, they don’t matter,” Mamdani said in an interview with Stateline. “To know the deep pain that has caused so many in this state, not just Palestinian Americans, but the many New Yorkers of conscience for whom any civilian life is one to be mourned and whose death is to be condemned.”

Many Muslim New Yorkers, he added, have reached out to him to say they doubted whether they could vote for Hochul again.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a potential 2028 Democratic presidential hopeful whose state also has a large Jewish population, took a wide detour from a previously scheduled trip to China this month to visit Israel to show “solidarity and support.” There, he met with Netanyahu, Herzog and victims of the terrorist attack with California connections.

Newsom also announced an additional $20 million in state funding to pay for security at nonprofit institutions, including synagogues and mosques, in his state. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, both Republicans, also have announced millions in new grant funding to pay for security measures at houses of worship.

By contrast, Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis — a current presidential candidate who has declared himself to be the most pro-Israel governor in America — has refrained from taking a trip to Israel, saying it would not be “productive.” However, DeSantis has chartered flights to bring Americans out of Israel at no cost to them and has sent two cargo planes filled with supplies to Israel.

At first, the DeSantis administration said the cargo planes were filled with donated medical supplies, clothing, hygiene products and children’s toys. Last week his spokesperson said the flights also carried drones, body armor and helmets and that the state had worked with private groups to supply weapons and ammunition as well. However, Israel’s consul general in Miami said DeSantis only helped expedite paperwork for a previously arranged shipment of “rifle parts.”

Since the 1950s, governors have traveled abroad, primarily to establish trade partnerships. But when it comes to an event like the generation-defining terrorist attack earlier this month, governors are going to feel motivated to respond further, said Lucas McMillan, a professor of political science at South Carolina’s Lander University.

“People don’t like to stay in their lanes,” said McMillan, who authored a book on the involvement of state governments in U.S. foreign relations. “Voters in this globalized world do expect the governor to represent the state, and the state’s interests are now not locked into the state’s borders.”

The economic ties can reverberate personally when foreign partners are in trouble. Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, who has prioritized an economic partnership with Israel during his time in office, told Forbes the Oct. 7 attack affected him personally because he had gotten to know people who live there. After the attack, he instructed the state treasurer to buy $10 million in Israel Bonds, which the Israeli government issues to investors to raise money.

Illinois made a similar investment in recent weeks, building on Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker’s outspoken support for Israel since the attack. Pritzker said after the attack that Illinois “unequivocally” supported Israel. He also saluted “peace-loving Palestinians.”

Jewish leaders praised Pritzker for his support.

“It was important for those who elected him to know exactly where he stood, and he stood on the side of the angels in this case,” said Dan Goldwin, the executive director of the Chicago-based Jewish United Fund, which hosted the communal gathering where the governor spoke.

Muslim concerns

Since Oct. 7, there have been 312 antisemitic incidents across the U.S., up 388% compared with the same period last year, according to the Anti-Defamation League, a civil rights group that fights antisemitism and bias. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil liberties organization, has reported a similar spike: The group said there have been 774 anti-Muslim incidents since the Hamas attack, the largest wave of complaints it has received since December 2015, when presidential candidate Donald Trump declared his intention to ban Muslim immigrants.

In the Chicago area earlier this month, a man stabbed the 6-year-old son of his Palestinian American tenants to death, piercing him 26 times. The boy’s mother also was stabbed but survived the attack. Pritzker, the Arab American Bar Association of Illinois and Jewish groups condemned the rise in hate and violence.

While gubernatorial support has been a comfort to Jewish Americans, many Muslim Americans feel abandoned and slighted by what they see as a muted official reaction to the Palestinian deaths in Gaza.

Imad Hamad, executive director of the American Human Rights Council, a civil rights group based in Dearborn, Michigan, said he was frustrated by Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s statement that she is “unequivocally supportive of Israel.” Dearborn has one of the nation’s largest concentrations of Muslim residents.

Whitmer’s original statement after the Oct. 7 attack was criticized by Jewish leaders for not being strong enough in supporting Israel. She quickly changed course — a path that diverged from many local Democratic and Muslim leaders in her state. Her first international trip as governor was to Israel in 2019.

“This bloodshed, unfortunately, is tagged with our American signatures,” Hamad said. “The governors should be considerate and sensitive to their constituents. They cannot be biased.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

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(Photo by New Jersey Monitor)

Over the past decade, ranked choice voting has become increasingly popular. From conservative Utah to liberal New York City, 13 million American voters in 51 jurisdictions — including all of Alaska and Maine — now use the system, under which voters rank candidates based on preference, leading to an instant runoff in a crowded race.

This year, Democrats and Republicans in power pushed back.

Arguing that ranked choice voting is too complicated for voters to understand, Democrats in the District of Columbia and Republicans in states such as Idaho, Montana and South Dakota took steps to prevent adoption of the voting system.

Earlier this month, the D.C. Democratic Party filed a lawsuit to block a ballot initiative that would adopt ranked choice voting and allow voters without a party affiliation to cast ballots in primaries. The lawsuit argued in part that ranked choice voting might confuse voters, which “could ultimately suppress the voice and influence of voters of color for decades to come.”

If ranked choice voting survives the lawsuit, voters will consider the measure next year. Two of D.C.’s neighbors — Takoma Park, Maryland, and Arlington, Virginia — have used the voting system. A November hearing has been scheduled.

Voters in Nevada will consider a similar ballot question in 2024. Several top Democratic officials in the state oppose it.

In April, Montana Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte signed into law a measure that preemptively bans localities from adopting ranked choice voting.

It’s a “complicated process,” Montana Republican state Rep. Lyn Hellegaard said in a state Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in March. Hellegaard, who sponsored the bill, argued that the voting system could delay vote counting by weeks because of the state’s large size.

“It throws voters into a game of odds, rather than informed choice,” she said at the hearing. “This scheme of voting would only solidify the distrust Montanans have in our elections.”

Republican lawmakers in Idaho and South Dakota enacted similar measures this year; Florida and Tennessee banned ranked choice voting last year. Republican-led legislatures approved proposals to ban it in Arizona and North Dakota, but the bills were vetoed by, respectively, Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs and Republican Gov. Doug Burgum.

Understanding the opposition

In ranked choice voting, voters rank candidates for an office from first to last. If no candidate receives a majority of first-place votes, the candidate with the least support is eliminated, and the second-place votes on those ballots are distributed to the remaining candidates.

The process continues until one candidate reaches a majority.

Proponents of the system argue it encourages candidates to appeal to a broad swath of the electorate, while also leading to a more diverse candidate pool and less negative campaigning.

But the challenge to the status quo has led to opposition from people in power, said Deb Otis, director of research and policy at FairVote, a nonpartisan organization leading the advocacy effort to adopt ranked choice voting.

“Sometimes, when we see party opposition, that can be a reflection of elected officials who know how to campaign, know how to win under the old system, not quite ready to want to throw that system out yet,” she said in an interview.

Republican opposition to the system revved up after the 2022 midterm elections, when former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin lost her congressional bid, blaming her loss on ranked choice voting. Voters in the state had adopted the method in 2020 through a ballot initiative.

Democrat Mary Peltola had plurality support after the first round of voting and eventually won after several rounds of tabulation.

“Ranked choice voting is the weirdest, most convoluted and most complicated voter suppression tool that Alaskans could have come up with,” Palin said in November, according to the Anchorage Daily News. “And the point is, we didn’t come up with this. We were sold a bill of goods.”

Former President Donald Trump, whose lies about the 2020 election continue to influence the GOP, has railed against ranked choice voting in Alaska.

“You never know who won in ranked choice. You could be in third place, and they announce that you won the election,” Trump claimed at an Anchorage rally last summer. “It’s a total rigged deal. Just like a lot of other things in this country.”

But there is nothing for conservatives to fear about ranked choice voting, said Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.

It’s not a ploy by Democrats, he said, contrary to what he’s heard from Republicans. The Virginia GOP even used ranked choice voting in 2021 to nominate now-Gov. Glenn Youngkin, he pointed out in an April column.

“If you look at the history and how it’s worked, you realize that it’s neutral between sides of the spectrum,” he told Stateline. “Finding a party candidate who better represents a wide range of voters in that party is good for whatever party adopts it.”

Still, he added, it might be hard to shake some of this conservative opposition, which he said has become more vocal and organized in recent years.

In Idaho, activists are gathering signatures for a ballot initiative that, if approved by voters, would adopt ranked choice voting statewide. Republican Attorney General Raúl Labrador, whose office is tasked with writing the titles of ballot initiatives, was ordered by the Idaho Supreme Court this year to re-write one that portrayed the idea negatively.

Labrador hasn’t been shy about his disdain for ranked choice voting.

“Let’s defeat these bad ideas coming from liberal outside groups,” he tweeted in May.

What’s next?

Despite this opposition, several other states are poised to adopt ranked choice voting in the coming years, said FairVote’s Otis, who argued it is “the fastest growing election reform in the country,” and could be used by Republicans in some states in next year’s presidential primaries.

Indeed, there were far more bills in state legislatures this year that supported ranked choice voting (74) than opposed it (17), with a handful of bills that would amend existing laws or commissioning studies of the voting system, according to Ballotpedia. There also was a substantial increase in the number of bills, rising from 44 bills in 2022 to 106 this year.

Ranked choice voting also was expanded in Burlington, Vermont, and adopted in Redondo Beach, California, this year.

Voters in Oregon will decide in November 2024 whether to adopt ranked choice voting. The measure was placed on the ballot by the state legislature — the first time this has happened in the country.

The ballot question is the culmination of a multiyear effort with a diverse coalition of voters of color, labor unions, youth groups and agricultural organizations, said Mike Alfoni, executive director for Oregon Ranked Choice Voting, which is leading the ballot initiative campaign.

“It isn’t this frightening overhaul of the system that would disrupt everything that is going on,” he said. “It’s simply an upgrade that gives voters more choice and has better outcomes, especially with open seat races.”

All but two Republicans opposed the measure in the legislature, which Alfoni blamed on the deep partisan divisions of Oregon politics. If approved, the state would implement the system by 2028.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

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