As Nov. 5 looms, so do concerns about election worker harassment and AI-fueled distrust sown by foreign adversaries.
At home: The United States is experiencing an “unprecedented” and increasing level of threats against public officials at all levels. Abroad: Artificial intelligence is “accelerating” malign influence operations by U.S. adversaries like China, Iran and Russia before Election Day.
Those are two sobering warnings Decision Points received from Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco in an exclusive interview focused on the current climate of political threats in America and foreign efforts to spread chaos heading into the last stretch of the 2024 campaign.
- “We are facing an unprecedented level of, and increase in, threats of violence against public officials,” Monaco says.
You have of course heard about the most high-profile recent threats: the two apparent assassination attempts against former President Donald Trump, first in Butler, Pennsylvania, and then at a golf course he owns in Florida, barely two months apart.
- There’s also been the brutal assault of Paul Pelosi, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, and an alleged attempt on the life of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, as well as the shooting at a congressional baseball practice that nearly claimed the life of House Republican Whip Steve Scalise.
From Presidents to Poll Workers
But one thing that’s so striking about political threats in 2024 America is how they target officials at every level – from senior elected officials all the way down to election workers, who are often temporary hires or volunteers performing basic but vital tasks to get people into the voting booth or get ballots counted.
Some of the threats against election workers can be attributed to conspiracy theories that the 2020 election was rigged, a regular refrain from Trump and some of his allies. Those lies also fueled the Jan. 6, 2021, riot in which supporters of the former president ransacked the Capitol.
Trump and Republicans have blamed Democrats’ claim that the former president poses a threat to American democracy for the attempts on his life. The man arrested in the Florida incident reportedly echoed the “democracy” talking point on social media, and was also apparently exercised about the war in Ukraine and Trump ending the Iran nuclear deal.
Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco speaks during a meeting of the Justice Department’s Election Threats Task Force on Sept. 4 in Washington.
Monaco, who played a central role in launching the Justice Department’s Election Threats Task Force in 2021, tells Decision Points about receiving frequent and worrisome reports from U.S. attorneys from all around the country.
- “Increasingly, what I’m seeing is that these are reports of threats of violence, and sometimes actual violence against public officials, including law enforcement agents, judges, prosecutors and, unfortunately, against election workers,” she says.
- Some of those election workers report “feeling quite intimidated, understandably, about taking on this work,” Monaco says.
U.S. News recently published an opinion piece by Nevada’s Democratic secretary of state, Francisco Aguilar, and his Republican counterpart in Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, pleading with Americans to serve as poll workers and help fill a staffing shortfall they described as being in the tens of thousands.
In a nod to concerns about safety, they cited efforts to beef up security at voting places and to punish those who harass or threaten poll workers.
These kinds of threats are a real-world concern:
- In 2021, the nonprofit Brennan Center reported 1 in 3 election officials felt unsafe because of their jobs.
- Princeton University’s Bridging Divides Initiative found that threats and harassment against local officials spiked in July.
- The BDI found threat and harassment events were “up 30% compared to the first seven months of 2023, and 87% compared to the same time period in 2022.”
Foreign Election AI-nterference
Recently, the Justice Department has made high-profile announcements about disrupting foreign malign influence operations, including two Russia-linked schemes – one of which co-opted conservative American commentators, another designed “to covertly promote AI-generated false narratives on social media.”
I asked Monaco: How is AI changing the foreign election interference game?
- “I think what it’s doing is accelerating and providing even more fuel for our foreign adversaries,” who are using that advanced tech “to sow discord, to sow distrust, to undermine confidence in our democratic processes, often using our own free society against us,” she says.
In addition to the Russian operation listed above, China and Iran have turned to AI to target American audiences, Monaco says.
Iran has used AI-generated content and fake personas to “sow discord, to sow distrust, and also … to use the Gaza conflict, almost like kerosene, to foment discord and distrust, and in some instances, to masquerade as U.S. activists, to promote protests.”
- “This is an area,” she says, “where we’re seeing foreign adversaries conduct online influence campaigns and using AI to accelerate and exacerbate that challenge for us.”
