You can see from the political signs at our home that we are a family of what convict Trump calls “The enemy from within. If the convict wins it’s looking like Trump troops will truck us off to concentration camps.

 

Donald Trump: 'The enemy within' should be handled by the military

Guardian News:

Add death threats to the long days & it’s easy to see why Voter Services is having difficulty finding election workers. 

“We’re seeing people walk away from this amazing profession that they actually love,” said Barton, who co-founded CSSE and has attended its security drills. The threats, harassment and other pressures have led some election officials, or their family members, to say, “‘Enough is enough. We don’t want you to live in this state of mind,’” Barton said.

The Justice Department has secured more than a dozen convictions in connection with threats made to election officials, but those prosecutions have been too few and far between for many election officials and their advocates.

Election officials who have stayed in the job despite the threats are drawing on their traumatic experiences in 2020.

When Al Schmidt was Philadelphia commissioner during the 2020 election, he said he didn’t know to which law enforcement agency he should report violent threats.

The threats became more specific, and aimed at Schmidt’s children, after Trump mentioned him by name in a tweet days after the 2020 election, according to Schmidt’s testimony to the House select committee that investigated January 6.

Four years later, Schmidt is Pennsylvania’s secretary of state, where he oversees election administration across the state. He also leads the state’s Election Threats Task Force, which includes state and federal law enforcement and is designed to detect threats to election workers more quickly.

“It would be naïve to not prepare for the possibility of that reoccurring,” Schmidt said of the threats that he and other election workers received in 2020…

Every few weeks, a group of active-duty and retired cops gather with election officials to plan for harrowing scenarios on Election Day.

What if someone shows up near a polling place with an assault rifle? Or uses artificial intelligence to mimic a county clerk’s voice and call in a bomb threat?

The sessions, which are held around the country, can trigger intense emotions for current and former election officials, some of whom have experienced harassment or death threats that have taken a toll on their mental health.

At the end of the sessions, Harold Love, a retired Michigan state trooper-turned-therapist, stands up and addresses the group.

“I talk with them about how it’s normal for them to feel this way,” Love told CNN. “You start seeing heads nod. When you see that other people are feeling the same thing or similar things, now it’s like, ‘OK, I’m not losing my mind.’”

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CNN

How a cop-turned-therapist is helping election workers deal with threats and harassment

Sean Lyngaas

Published 6:00 AM EDT, Fri October 18, 2024

CNN  — 

You do get a token salary as an election officer in  Chester County PA. 

As a judge of elections you begin on Saturday before election day. Go to the polls Monday evening before election day to set up. Then get up at 4AM election day and most elections get back home after 11PM.  

November 2008 we got back home at 2AM. 

Add death threats to the long days & it’s easy to see why Voter Services is having difficulty finding election workers. 

For a decade I was an election worker in Chester County PA Precinct 110 where my wife was judge of elections. 

Bob Saucier was a man who was muscle for Chester/Lancaster County John Birch Society Chapter Leader Pat Sellers. 

He came to Precinct 110 in Coatesville just before the polls closed at 8 PM. He put his 300 pound body on the table where election workers sat and demanded to vote. My wife called Voter Services. 

Voter Services knew Saucier was registered to vote in Downingtown, PA. 

He had once lived at Coatesville Ward 4-2, Precinct 110. A court order prevented him from being within 75 feet of his old residence where he lived with his divorced wife. Neighbors witnessed Bob dragging his wife down the sidewalk by her hair. 

Voter Services said let him vote. His vote won’t count. If he didn’t leave Voter Services would have him removed. No one can be inside the polls but election workers after the polls close. 

I wrote about Bob Here:

“I can visualize a terrorist attack at a polling place in the United States because it would be so very simple to do. But if the terrorist thought about it at all, so very ineffective. 

The voter intimidation at Coatesville’s polls was tailored to specific voters.  Bob Saucier was moved from polling place to polling place to intimidate specific voters.

Bob was allegedly diagnosed as bipolar. 

Bob could manage living when he was on his medication. I think most of his “incidents” happened when he tried going off his medication.

I talked him down on one Election Day when the judge of elections threatened to shut down the 110 Precinct because of fighting. I saw in his eyes when a someone he wanted to fight with came to vote. I spent most of that Election Day facing Bob and talking him down.

My wife became judge of elections at Coatesville's 110 Precinct mostly because no one else was willing to deal with Bob Saucier intimidating voters on election day.  

I have no trouble talking to anyone. I can find something I like in anyone. That applies to Nazis or drug dealers who I know shot people. Pat Sellers never claimed to be a Nazi but he came close. 

Bob went to his family in Alabama and died there. His son died a few years later. 

I think Bob was easily manipulated. I think he felt important as part of Pat Sellers’ John Birch Society white supremacist group. Bob couldn’t follow Pat Sellers’ lead into public office. I understand that he was removed from the Coatesville School Board in a straight jacket. 

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Tuesday, November 6, 2018

I don’t expect violence at the polls in Coatesville. I do think it can happen somewhere on Nov. 6th.

The Justice Department

Justice Briefs: Election Threats:

WASHINGTON – An indictment was unsealed today charging a Pennsylvania man with threatening to kill a representative of a state political party who was recruiting official poll watchers.

According to the indictment, on Sept. 6, John Pollard, 62, of Philadelphia, sent threatening text messages to Victim 1. Victim 1 had previously posted online, in Victim 1’s capacity as an employee of a state political party, that Victim 1 was recruiting volunteers to “help[] observe at the polls on Election Day” and included Victim 1’s phone number. Pollard allegedly texted Victim 1 that he was “interested in being a poll watcher” and included Victim 1’s first name. Pollard then allegedly texted three threats to Victim 1:
•    “I will KILL YOU IF YOU DON’T ANSWER ME!”
•    “Your days are numbered, B****!”
•    “GONNA F***ING FIND YOU AND SKIN YOU ALIVE AND USE YOUR SKIN FOR F***ING TOILET PAPER, YOU F***ING KKK**T!”

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Philadelphia Resident Charged for Election-Related Threat to State Party Representative

Monday, October 21, 2024

For Immediate Release

U.S. Attorney's Office, Western District of Pennsylvania