As election threats rise, Justice Dept. says its options are limited
A self-proclaimed “First Amendment auditor” barged into the Bernalillo County, N.M., elections office in May, shot video of workers testing voting machines and accused them of hiding what they were doing from the public.
When the man posted the video on his YouTube channel with half a million subscribers, the harassment of the staff got worse: a deluge of hostile emails and phone calls, including cursing, personal attacks and warnings.
“The language was, ‘You’ll get what’s coming to you. You guys are stealing the election.’ It was overwhelming,” said Nathan Jaramillo, the county’s elections administrator. He said local FBI agents told him the messages did not rise to the level of illegal threats, but instead were speech protected by the Constitution. Neither the YouTuber nor anyone else would face charges.
It’s a little-understood reality of the Justice Department’s expanding efforts to address the possibility of intimidation and violence around November’s elections: While the agency is conducting training seminars for local officials, setting up regional and national command posts and investigating scores of allegations, it is bringing criminal charges only in a small number of cases. And each of those takes a long time to prosecute.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/10/03/justice-election-threats-prosecutions/
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