Republicans won’t allow that, of course, because their supporters are doing the threatening.
Democracy requires the consent of the governed, and you don’t get that without fair elections, which you get by means of impartial professional election administration.
We had that in 2020, but we might not have it in the future. Trump Republicans, incited by Trump himself, are waging a campaign of harassment and threats against election workers across the country, and many are quitting their election jobs as a result (read story here). No matter how dedicated they are, and how willing to put up with flak from the public to stay on a job they consider important, putting up with the threats against their families and children is asking too much of anyone.
The haters sometimes go so far as to publish their home addresses.
If the professionals quit, their replacements might be, even are likely to be, people who think their new job in the election department is to make sure their candidate doesn’t lose. That’s a huge problem for the future of our democracy.
The solution is to keep the impartial professionals on the job, and you do that by protecting them. Stalking, harassment, and threats are crimes. Part of any crime-fighting strategy is deterrence, and you deter by enforcing the law and making examples of those who egregiously break it.
For crimes like this, you want federal law enforcement involved, both because it’s a nationwide problem and local law enforcement can be spotty, ineffective, lack resources, or where politics is involved (as it is here) even be sympathetic to the lawbreakers. A Reuters investigation found that state and local law enforcement is lax at present (see story here).
The federal Department of Justice has established a task force last summer, but didn’t make its first arrest until today, January 21, 2022. In that case, a Texas man is charged with the federal crime of communicating a threat across state lines (read story here; more details about the case and defendant here).
In an ideal world, and America is far from ideal right now, threatening an election worker because of his or her election work should be a federal felony that gets the offender serious prison time, and threatening the election worker’s children should result in an enhanced sentence, say a doubling of the base sentence.
I don’t mean 30 days in jail, I’m talking years behind bars. The Texas man mentioned above, who used Craigslist to solicit hitmen to kill three Georgia election officials, could get 5 years if he’s convicted. Making him serve at least 2 or 3 years would send a message.
Severe penalties, coupled with relentless FBI efforts to track down violators and bring them to justice — as they are doing with the Capitol rioters — is what’s required to have a significant deterrent effect. It’s what you have to do, if you want to shut down this activity.
And if we don’t shut it down, we could lose one of the essential pillars of our democracy, which is professionally managed elections.