Leading up to November’s elections, U.S. Attorney General is vowing to wage lawfare against election security measures and to prosecute perceived “threats” by those who speak out strongly against election fraud.
AG Merrick likened election security laws to the police brutality 59 years earlier against civil rights demonstrators in Selma, Alabama in his remarks at a Selma church service on Sunday:
“Court decisions in recent years have drastically weakened the protections of the Voting Rights Act that marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge bled for 59 years ago.
“And since those decisions, there has been a dramatic increase in legislative measures that make it harder for millions of eligible voters to vote and to elect the representatives of their choice.”
Garland boasted that he has doubled the numbers of lawyers to challenge state and local measures employed to ensure the integrity of ballots and verify the identity of those who try to vote:
“That is why, one of the first things I did as Attorney General was to double the number of lawyers in the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division.
“That is why we are challenging efforts by states and jurisdictions to implement discriminatory, burdensome, and unnecessary restrictions on access to the ballot, including those related to mail-in voting, the use of drop boxes, and voter ID requirements.”
But, the U.S. attorney general didn’t stop there.
Garland said that has a task force that will prosecute those it believes are threatening election workers and officials:
“Today, threats to the right to vote have expanded to target not just the voters themselves, but the citizens we rely on to fairly administer voting. Not just elected officials, not just paid administrators, but also the local volunteers who ensure that voting is available in every precinct.
“That is why I launched the Justice Department’s Election Threats Task Force to combat threats against election workers.”
Garland cited two isolated instances of individuals charged with making violent threats, one in 2020 and one in 2022. In one case, an Indiana man pleaded guilty to one count of making a threatening interstate communication to an election worker in Michigan. In the other, a California man was recently charged with allegedly leaving a voicemail containing a violent threat on the personal cell phone of an election official in the Maricopa County, Arizona in 2022.
In both cases, the men had expressed outrage due to their beliefs that election fraud and cheating had taken place during the November 2020 elections.
While actual violence was allegedly threatened in both of Garland’s examples, his remarks suggest his task force may prosecute any perceived “threat.”
If one party’s poll watchers try to force their way back into a place where they’ve been locked out by ballot counters of another party, is that a “threat”?
Likewise, many liberals today claim that those who voice opposition to their views are guilty of “hate speech” threats – such as when LGBTQ activists call it “violence” to speak out against transgender ideology.