Early last year, Fulton County election officials dispatched a series of internal emails to top county executives asking for police protection for some election workers dealing with a barrage of threats and harassment sparked by the 2020 presidential election’s outcome.
The Fulton election officials alerted the county that the poll workers were being harassed, both at work and at home. But county officials ultimately decided not to provide the requested protection, which would have cost from $25 to $30 an hour, because a couple of the workers did not live in Fulton, the county’s former elections director, Rick Barron, told Atlanta Civic Circle. Barron’s last day on the job was April 1.
The Fulton case is extreme, but it illustrates that poll workers are essentially on their own when dealing with verbal and physical attacks–as well as any allegations of election-related misconduct, legal experts and elections officials say.
