US states concerned about election unrest are taking security measures

By Brad Brooks, Gabriella Borter and Nathan Layne

LAS VEGAS, Nevada (Reuters) – A security fence surrounds a building in Las Vegas where a Nevada county is counting votes. An Arizona sheriff has kept his department on high alert to protect against potential violence with drones and snipers on standby. The National Guard has been activated or will be activated in 19 states so far to help maintain peace.

As a tense America elects Republican Donald Trump or Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris as president on Tuesday, concerns about possible political violence have prompted officials to take a variety of measures to increase security during and after Election Day.

Many of the most visible movements are in the battleground states that will decide the presidential election, states like Nevada where protests by Trump supporters broke out after the 2020 election.

This year, a security fence surrounds the scene of some of those protests: the Tabulation Center in Las Vegas.

A defense official said Monday that Alabama, Arizona, Delaware, Iowa, Illinois, North Carolina, New Mexico, Oregon, Wisconsin and Washington state have current National Guard missions, while Washington DC, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Pennsylvania , Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia have troops on standby.

In Arizona, a similar metal fence has been installed at the Maricopa County vote tabulation center in downtown Phoenix, a flashpoint in 2020 for rigged election conspiracy theories and threats against election officials.

County Sheriff Russ Skinner said his department will be “on high alert” for threats and violence and he has instructed staff to be available for duty.

“We will have a lot of resources, a lot of personnel, a lot of equipment,” he added, noting that delegates will use drones to monitor activity around polling stations, and that snipers and other reinforcements will be on standby for deployed when violence occurs. probably.

He said “polarization” will intensify in the days after the election, so law enforcement will remain alert and “there will be zero tolerance for anything related to criminal activity.”

Concerned about the possibility of protests or even violence, several Arizona schools and churches that have served as polling places in the past will not serve as polling places this year, a local election official told Reuters.

CHURCH BUILDINGS

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), which has more than 400,000 members in Arizona, has offered several polling places to fill the gap.

A dozen community leaders from across the state and with different political backgrounds and cultures have formed a committee to focus on curbing political violence, said member Jane Andersen, a member of the LDS Church and Protecting Democracy Specialist for Arizona at Mormon Women for Ethical Government.

The group says it is willing to tap a broad network, including religious leaders, who can help spread factual information to counter unrest fueled by misinformation.

In the 2020 battleground state of Michigan, Trump supporters descended on the convention hall in downtown Detroit and began banging on the windows as the counting of absentee ballots began on a second day. This year, yellow bicycle racks lined both sides of the boulevard on which it stands.

Visitors must pass through metal detectors and about fifteen police officers patrol the cavernous hall. Daniel Baxter, Detroit’s chief operating officer for absentee voting and special projects, said police are also present on the roof and around the building. Eight days of early preprocessing of ballots passed peacefully, Baxter said.

Peter Simi, a sociology professor at Chapman University in California who has researched threats against government officials, said the worst-case scenario would be that Trump loses and does not concede defeat.

Rather than a repeat of the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters, he said the conflict could be “scattered, diffuse events across multiple locations” that would be more difficult for law enforcement to address.

Precautions extend beyond the battlegrounds. Authorities in Oregon and Washington state said they have activated the National Guard. Some storefronts in Washington, DC and elsewhere are covered with plywood.

Back in Las Vegas, Faviola Garibay inspected the security fence surrounding the linen-colored building where Clark County officials tabulate votes and where voters like her can drop off election ballots.

“The fencing, the police presence here, it seems safe,” she said. “I feel safe voting.”

(Reporting by Brad Brooks in Las Vegas, Gabriella Borter and Peter Eisler in Phoenix, Arizona, Nathan Layne in Detroit and Andrew Hay in Taos, New Mexico; Editing by David Gregorio and Raju Gopalakrishnan)