Panic buttons, drones, snipers among plans to guard a high-risk election

Eager to reassure nervous Americans that their votes will be protected, authorities are touting unprecedented security plans designed to withstand violence and other nightmare scenarios on Election Day and in a potentially uncertain aftermath.

Throughout the country, local officials are taking elaborate measures to fortify election-related sites, including plans for snipers on a rooftop to protect a key vote-counting headquarters, panic buttons for election workers and surveillance drones buzzing overhead.

Law enforcement agencies are keeping first responders on standby and flooding the streets with extra patrol officers. At least two states, Nevada and Washington, have activated the National Guard in case of unrest. Arizona’s secretary of state, in charge of certifying statewide results, has said he wears a bulletproof vest in case of attack.

Political analysts and pro-democracy groups see two main takeaways from the extraordinary effort to defend the vote: The first is that Americans should have high confidence that casting a ballot is safe and that the system will hold because of extra guardrails added since the chaotic fallout of Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn his defeat in 2020. The second is that it shouldn’t have to be this way.

“There is clear and present danger but there’s also, frankly, substantial vigilance and substantial protections that are in place,” Damon Hewitt, executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, told reporters in a briefing call.

He added, however, that “it shouldn’t take this much and we darn sure shouldn’t normalize any of it.”

Analysts say the biggest threat is posed by the right-wing election denial movement that emerged in 2020 with Trump’s refusal to accept his loss to Joe Biden. His promotion of conspiracy theories related to the vote drew thousands to the streets for “Stop the Steal” rallies that culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol in support of Trump’s goal of blocking Congress’s certification of the results. Trump was later indicted in federal and state court for his role in trying to overturn the election, and has pleaded not guilty.

In the years since, according to extremism monitors, election denialism has moved from the fringe to the core of the Republican Party, metastasizing into an influential pro-Trump force that preemptively rejects defeat.

Trump has not committed to accepting the outcome this year and has claimed without evidence that Democrats will cheat to install his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris. Harris has said she is committed to free and fair elections and to the peaceful transfer of power.

Much of the security preparation is focused on the post-election period, when counting will continue in some states, notably Arizona and Pennsylvania. The potential uncertainty of the outcome coupled with a deluge of misinformation expected on social media during those days could stoke unrest and prompt attempts to disrupt the process, officials said.

There is also some hope that all the preparation will prove unnecessary - or ward off trouble, as officials believe happened in 2022, when similar predictions of chaos never materialized. Because Trump was not on the ballot then, however, officials are leaving nothing to chance this year.

Despite polling that shows Trump and Harris in something close to a dead heat, Trump allies already are pushing the idea that his victory is inevitable, “that it’s going to be a landslide,” David Becker, executive director of the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation & Research, told reporters on a media call.

“If he loses the election - or perceives that he’s losing - you can imagine the shock that’s going to be felt by his supporters,” Becker said, “and how that’s going to be leveraged by grifters to try to anger them, to try to incite them to violence.”

A showpiece of worst-case-scenario preparation is Maricopa County, home to most Arizona voters.

The vote-tabulation building in downtown Phoenix is protected like a fortress and staffers are monitoring social media in real time for reports of problems. Drone surveillance will help law enforcement officials keep eyes on potential threats.

Maricopa was central to attempts by Trump and his allies after the 2020 election to try to stop vote-counting, with hundreds of Trump supporters protesting outside of the county’s tabulation center as ballots were still being counted. Those efforts failed.

Maricopa County Sheriff Russ Skinner has paused vacation requests for first responders as he mobilizes up to 200 department personnel to work around-the-clock through the election cycle, monitoring polling sites and outdoor drop boxes. The office plans to post snipers on rooftops if necessary.

Before the contentious 2020 cycle, Skinner said, no more than 50 deputies worked on elections.

“2020 changed that paradigm,” he said.

The picture is similar in other states. Hundreds of election offices are now buttressed with bulletproof glass, steel doors and surveillance equipment. Some counties have distributed panic buttons on lanyards for the chief poll worker to wear in each voting location. Others have stocked anti-contamination suits and Narcan - an antidote to opioid overdose - in the event of suspicious powders arriving via mail, as has occurred in recent years.

So far, disruptions have fit a pattern of election-related violence that Becker described as “isolated and episodic,” rather than big coordinated attacks.

Ballot drop boxes were set afire in Washington state and Oregon, although officials have salvaged most of the damaged ballots or successfully contacted voters to allow them to vote anew. A poll worker was punched in the face in San Antonio after instructing a voter to remove a MAGA cap, as required under a law that bans political slogans inside polling stations.

Federal authorities say foreign adversaries also are exploiting tensions.

Russia has been behind numerous fake videos that have circulated on social media, according to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA. One recent one purports to show an election worker in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, destroying ballots. Another claims to show a noncitizen from Haiti claiming to have registered to vote and cast a ballot in Georgia.

Such content, CISA director Jen Easterly said in an interview, is intended to sow mistrust in the outcome, pit Americans against one another and stoke unrest. She said more such efforts are expected to continue, “likely after November 5th, probably until January 6th, when the Congress finally certifies the election.”

The longer the vote-counting process drags on without a clear winner, extremism monitors warn, the higher the risk that radicalized Trump supporters will react with unrest or violence. In 2020, the major television networks didn’t project Biden’s victory until Saturday, five days after the election and long after Trump had falsely declared that he had won.

While organized factions such as the Proud Boys and anti-government militia groups that took part in the Capitol attack still a pose a threat, monitors say, there’s also a risk of vigilantism from Trump supporters who buy into the notion of a hopelessly rigged system that requires a popular uprising of “patriots” to dismantle.

“If there is going to be violence, it is going to be around these groups ‘protecting’ America, ‘protecting’ American citizens, from a government that is no longer going to be trusted,” said Wendy Via, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, which tracks militant movements.

This election, officials are more attuned to the threat posed by far-right and other extremist movements. They have said they are trying to find a security posture that safeguards voters as they cast ballots but doesn’t scare them away from the polls.

The balance can be particularly tough to find in communities with significant Black populations and histories of tensions with police.

“It’s a new normal for us to have armed security on-site, hopefully in a minimal way that doesn’t intimidate,” said Linda Farmer, who runs elections in Pierce County, Washington. “We worked really hard with law enforcement to walk that line.”

Other jurisdictions, including in North Carolina, devised special training courses for police officers so they respond sensitively to emergencies at polling locations. The training emphasized that the role of officers is to protect people’s right to vote, not infringe on it.

Still others are worried about disruptions such as swatting of polling places, meaning a prank call to emergency services that is intended to provoke a law enforcement response. Some election offices have supplied local police or sheriffs with phone numbers for every polling location so they can call before they send in police officers and potentially upend voting.

Even if Election Day goes smoothly, other potentially challenging dates loom, notably Dec. 17, when the presidential electors for the winning candidate in each state will convene at state capitols to cast electoral votes. In 2020, Trump’s campaign assembled electors in a number of states he had lost to falsely claim he won.

In Georgia, which was among those states and is a swing state this year, a security fence has gone up around the Capitol. In Arizona, locks have been upgraded on some facility doors and enhanced camera systems installed.

“Everybody is much more tense, worried about security, but determined,” said Phil Burgess, the clerk in Marion County, Oregon, home of the state capital, Salem.

For many election officials, adjusting to the new security posture can be nerve-racking.

When a package arrived at the Wake County, N.C., Board of Elections in late October that felt too heavy to contain mail ballots, officials kicked into gear to assess whether they were facing a threat.

Inside the package, however, was a box of cookies and a thank-you note.

Beleaguered officials say they take heart in the robust turnout in mail voting as well as in-person early voting. With the number of ballots cast surpassing 70 million on Saturday, they said, the message is that voters haven’t given up on elections.

“The turnout this year is a testament to the fact that people are not afraid of what they’re going to experience,” said Karen Brinson Bell, who leads the North Carolina State Board of Elections. “They have trust in our process.”