As Election Day nears, many voters and election workers are increasingly concerned about intimidation. Threats, politicization, and violence around the election process marked the 2020 elections and their aftermath. Violent political rhetoric and intimidating conduct persisted during the 2022 election, and efforts to intimidate voters and election workers are likely to continue this year.
Thankfully, the many federal and state laws prohibiting intimidation are flexible enough to account for the changing sources and targets of this abuse, and officials are already working to ensure free and fair elections. Both federal and state law are clear: intimidating voters or election workers is illegal.
These resources provide a detailed overview of the federal and state laws that serve as guardrails against the intimidation of voters and election workers and the disruption of the voting process. We focus on 12 states where the risk of disruption is especially high based on the volume of false allegations and anti-voter activity over the past few years: Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin.
