The new reality in American elections

For 20 years, her neighbors have relied on Cindy Elgan as a candidate elections in her little corner of Nevada. Now those same neighbors believe she is part of a conspiracy to deprive Donald Trump of the presidency.

Never mind that Republicans received 82 percent of votes cast in 2020 in Esmeralda County — which, with a population of about 700, is one of the least populated in the region. United States.

“I don’t trust the results of the 2020 election,” said Mary Jane Zakas, a retired teacher who is backing an effort to recall Elgan as district secretary.

The problem, Zakas said, echoing a theory often repeated among conservatives, is the use of voting machines instead of paper ballots.

“As Mike Lindell has pointed out, there are so many ways to cheat,” she said, referring to the man whose outbursts about election integrity are often placed next to advertisements for the pillows he sells.

‘There are mathematical formulas that can change your voice. There are things that can turn it around,” Zakas said.

Elgan knows nearly all of the 600 registered voters in Esmeralda, a stretch of desert where gold seekers — including author Mark Twain — once sought their fortunes.

In the past, she said, the community always seemed pleased with the way elections went.

But when Trump refused to accept his loss to Joe Biden in 2020, things turned sour.

“Some people are very passionate about this, and I can’t fault them for being passionate about their country,” she told AFP at her office in Goldfield.

“I may not agree with some of the things they do, say or don’t say, but I understand.”

‘It hurts the elections’

More than a third of Americans harbor doubts about the integrity of the electoral system, polls show.

Claire Woodall of research institute Issue One says there has been distrust for some time.

But Trump’s refusal to concede in 2020 has hardened matters.

“We really started to see questions, especially about the conduct of the election,” she said.

Beyond the noise it creates nationally, the way this plays out in smaller communities like Goldfield can be insidious, she said, with threats, intimidation and attacks forcing many election officials from their posts.

Turnover among local election officials has been especially acute in states where presidential elections are typically close, such as Arizona, where Biden won by 0.3 percentage points in 2020, and Nevada, where the margin was 2.4 percentage points, according to a report from Issue One .

Amy Burgans, who organizes elections in Douglas County, home to 50,000 people in western Nevada, offered an illustration.

“I have only been in this position for four years, and yet I am one of the highest ranking clerks in the state,” she said.

Burgans, a Republican, finds it frustrating that most of the misinformation about election integrity comes from her own party.

The lies and conspiracies are driving honest officials away, she said.

“We are losing the institutional knowledge of the clerks who have been doing this for years.

“It doesn’t help make the elections more secure. It hurts the elections.”

Threats to election officials

AFP contacted several former Nevada election officials, who declined to speak on the record.

“I don’t want to expose my family again,” one said.

A quarter of election officials reported experiencing abuse or threats between 2020 and 2022, according to a survey by the nonpartisan Elections and Voting Information Center.

Burgans was one of them. In 2022, she received death threats.

The growing tension has led to the introduction of once-unheard of security measures, such as bulletproof vests, surveillance cameras and even snipers stationed atop buildings near voting centers, said Tammy Patrick of the National Association of Election Officials.

In Los Angeles, election offices are working with law enforcement to have sniffer dogs inspect ballots that arrive by mail.

“In various places in the country… they have received mail containing various substances. Some of them were fentanyl… one of them was methamphetamine,” Patrick said.

Burgans said she and her team now carry Narcan — an antidote for opioid poisoning — in case they receive a contaminated ballot.

She now spends much of her working life explaining the voting process to the public and reassuring them that it is safe.

“For the most part, I think people are willing to talk,” she said.

But some simply cannot be convinced.

“No matter how hard I try to tell them the facts,” Burgans said, “they still want to believe the misinformation they’ve been fed.”