Workers scan postal ballot papers to check against the district official’s list. They processed more than 3,000 postal ballot papers in a building in Rio Arriba County, Tierra Amarilla, in October 2020. (Eddie Moore / )
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SANTA FE – Foreign Minister Maggie Toulouse Oliver says she faced so many threats in the past year that she left home for weeks after the 2020 elections.
Meanwhile, an administrative worker in southern New Mexico said she had received racist mail and that one of her employees was followed one night by a man who slipped into the officer’s office without permission.
The incidents are now resurfacing as state lawmakers and others begin assessing how to improve security for election officials and the ordinary New Mexicans who volunteer to assist in the election every election cycle.
A lawmaker this week came up with the idea of passing a law specifically forbidding threats against election workers, similar to the law regulating bodily harm or injury to sports referees.
Others are unsure whether a legal solution is appropriate.
In any case, election officials in parts of New Mexico reported an unusually high level of hostility last year – amid false claims of widespread election fraud – and they are preparing to do more of it in future elections.
Toulouse Oliver, a Democrat and senior election officer for the state, is part of a national council that works with the US Department of Homeland Security to protect the country’s elections and the people who conduct them.
It can ask for funding or propose other ideas to the legislature, she said, based on recommendations emerging from the work of the Coordinating Council.
“I don’t want this worry to discourage people who are thinking about working on the elections,” Toulouse Oliver said in an interview on Tuesday. “The truth of the matter is that your district and state election officials and the federal government take this very seriously and do everything possible to keep people safe.”
Doña Ana county clerk Amanda López Askin said racist and racially charged remarks were mailed in last year. In phone calls, people told her she was a thief and a crook who was going to jail.
But their main concern, López Askin said, is the way some people treated poll workers and district workers on the front lines. Election challengers who are allowed to watch the electoral process on behalf of parties or external groups have become particularly aggressive over the past year, she said.
A temporary worker had tears in his eyes after a flood of threats and criticism.
“They just want to do their job, do a good job and go home,” López Askin said of election officials. “The hostility they have dealt with has been deeply discouraging and disappointing.”
In one case, a man followed a Doña Ana County worker at night while she was carrying postal ballot papers back to the office. The man rushed into the building behind her as the door closed and temporarily gained access to a restricted area.
“Sure, it was something that everyone felt uncomfortable and probably unsafe about,” said Lindsey Bachman, assistant clerk in the Doña Ana district.
But some employees did not report anything as worrisome.
Eddy County Clerk Darlene Rosprim said her county “did not experience any harassment and / or threats to our election workers during the 2020 election. It was a busy, high-turnout election that went smoothly in Eddy County. “
Bernalillo County Clerk Linda Stover, who oversees elections in New Mexico’s most populous district, said the passions boiled over a few times over the past year, but she isn’t sure a legislative resolution would help.
Workers processed more than 3,000 postal ballot papers in a building in the Rio Arriba district of Tierra Amarilla in October 2020. (Eddie Moore / )
Poll workers, she said, had to endure heckling while carrying postal ballot papers. But Albuquerque police responded quickly when needed, said Stover.
“The choice,” she said, “was just so passionate.”
Toulouse Oliver said she had received death threats via email and her staff received threatening phone calls at work.
But she left her Santa Fe residence late last year when her photo, home address, and other personal information appeared on a website called Enemies of the People. She was among about 40 people, she said, on the website’s hit list, which included targets above the officers’ photos.
“There were about five weeks – almost six weeks – when I had to hide and take a lot of personal safety precautions for lack of a better deadline,” said Toulouse Oliver. “And it was nowhere near as bad as some of my colleagues.”
The FBI later linked Iran to the online threats, according to the Washington Post.
Toulouse Oliver said she and her family went home occasionally but stayed elsewhere in New Mexico for a few weeks in December and January until long after the former president’s supporters of the January 6 fatal attack on the U.S. Capitol Donald Trump stormed the building.
Lt. State Police Mark Soriano told the Journal in May that his agency had provided additional security to Toulouse Oliver and other elected officials.
Senator Daniel Ivey-Soto, an Albuquerque Democrat and chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, which often deals with electoral law, said New Mexico may want to pass a criminal law that specifically addresses threats against election officials.
Similar laws already prohibit attacks or bodily harm against school workers, health workers and sports officials.
People who choose to run are used to some level of harsh criticism, said Ivey-Soto, but residents who agree to work a 14-hour day to run a polling station are a different matter Thing.
“The ordinary employees don’t sign up for this,” he said.
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