Secretary of State Jena Griswold joined 14 other Secretaries of State in a letter supporting the recently introduced Election Worker Protection Act.
“Election workers are the backbone of democracy; they work tirelessly to ensure that our elections are a success. Unfortunately, the wave of election disinformation flooding the nation has led to increased threats towards these dedicated public servants,” said Secretary Griswold. “That is why I’ve joined my colleagues in supporting the Federal Election Worker Protection Act. I thank Senator Klobuchar and Senator Durbin for their leadership on this important legislation.”
The Federal Election Worker Protection Act would provide access to resources for the recruitment and protection of elections workers. The bill would also make threatening, intimidating, or doxing election workers and officials a federal crime.
During the 2022 Legislative Session, Secretary Griswold led a new bipartisan law that provides protections for election officials and workers throughout Colorado. The Colorado Election Official Protection Act sponsored by Representative Monica Duran, Representative Emily Sirota, Senate President Steve Fenberg, and Senator Brittany Pettersen establishes election officials and workers as a protected class against doxing, which is the release of personal information on the internet for the purpose of threatening a person or their family. The bill also prohibits intimidating, threatening or coercing an election official while they are performing official duties or retaliating against them for performing their official duties.
The full letter of support:
Dear Speaker Pelosi and Leader Schumer:
We write to express our support for federal legislation to support election workers, including the recently introduced Election Worker Protection Act.
Election workers are essential to the administration of our elections, and each election we rely on citizens from across our states to lend a hand and help ensure the free exercise of the right to vote. The safety and security of these election workers is critical to the health of our democracy.
As Secretaries of State and Chief Election Officials, we are aware of the ongoing and unprecedented threats directed at election workers across the country, and have seen their terrible impact on our colleagues. These threats are often violent and have been aimed at us, and at individuals simply going about their jobs. As a result of this rise in threats and other challenges, we have seen shortages of election workers in our states and across the country.
Though some of our states have passed legislation to address these threats, additional action is needed at the federal level to ensure that all election workers have the necessary support and protection to do their jobs. The Election Worker Protection Act makes clear that these attacks on election workers will not be tolerated, by making it a federal crime to threaten, interfere with, or dox an election worker.
This legislation also provides needed resources to support election workers, including for recruitment and training, physical security measures, and protection against disclosure of personal information.
These protections will protect hardworking public servants who in recent years have received death threats and even had their home addresses published online. Sadly, threats like this have been experienced by election workers in all of our states and across the country; we cannot allow them to continue unchecked.
We know what tools are needed to protect election workers, and we look forward to working with Congress to advance this legislation.
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