Conspiracy Theories and Threats: The New Reality in US Elections

For two decades her neighbors have trusted Cindy Elgan to run elections in her small corner of Nevada. Now those same neighbors think she is part of a conspiracy to rob Donald Trump of the presidency.

Never mind that in 2020 the Republican got 82 percent of the votes cast in Esmeralda County -- whose 700-or-so people make it one of the least populated in the United States.

“I do not trust the results from the 2020 election,” said Mary Jane Zakas, a retired schoolteacher who backs an effort to recall Elgan as county clerk.

The problem, said Zakas, echoing a theory often repeated among conservatives, is the use of voting machines instead of paper ballots.

“As Mike Lindell has pointed out, there’s so many ways to cheat,” she said, referring to the man whose outbursts about election integrity are frequently placed alongside ads for the pillows he sells.

“There’s mathematical formulas that can alter your vote. There’s things that can flip it,” Zakas said.

Elgan knows by sight nearly all of the 600 registered voters in Esmeralda, a stretch of desert where goldminers -- including the author Mark Twain -- once sought their fortune.

In the past, she said, the community always seemed happy with the way elections were run.

But when Trump refused to accept his loss to Joe Biden in 2020, things turned sour.

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“Some people are very passionate about this, and I can’t fault them for being passionate about their country,” she told AFP at her office in Goldfield.

“I may not agree with some of the things they do, say or don’t say, but I do understand.”

‘It’s hurting the elections’

More than a third of Americans harbor doubts about the integrity of the electoral system, polls show. 

Claire Woodall, of the Issue One research institute, said there has long been a current of distrust.

But Trump’s refusal to concede in 2020 calcified things.

“We really started to see questioning, specifically of the administration of the election,” she said.

Outside of the noise it creates on a national level, the way this plays out in smaller communities like Goldfield can be insidious, she said, with threats, harassment and attacks forcing many election officials out of their posts.

The turnover among local election officials has been especially acute in states where presidential elections typically are close, such as Arizona, where Biden won by 0.3 percentage point in 2020, and Nevada, where the margin was 2.4 percentage points, according to a report by Issue One.

Amy Burgans, who runs elections in Douglas County, home to 50,000 people in Nevada’s west, offered an illustration.

“I have only been in this position for four years, and yet I am one of the most senior clerks in the state,” she said.

Burgans, a Republican, finds it frustrating that most of the misinformation about election integrity comes from her own party.

The lies and conspiracies are driving honest officials out, she said.

“We’re losing the institutional knowledge of the clerks that have been doing this for years. 

“It’s not helping to make the election more secure. It’s hurting the elections.”

Threats to election officials

AFP contacted several former Nevada election officials who declined to speak on the record.

“I don’t want to expose my family again,” one of them said. 

A quarter of election officials reported having suffered abuse or threats between 2020 and 2022, according to a survey by the nonpartisan Elections and Voting Information Center. 

Burgans was one of them. She received death threats in 2022. 

The growing tension has led to the adoption of once unheard-of security measures, like bulletproof vests, surveillance cameras and even snipers stationed atop buildings near voting centers, said Tammy Patrick of the National Association of Election Officials. 

In Los Angeles, election offices have partnered with law enforcement to have sniffer dogs inspect ballots arriving by mail. 

“In different places across the country... they have received mail with various substances in it. Some of them were fentanyl... one of them was methamphetamine,” said Patrick.

Burgans said she and her team now carry Narcan -- an antidote to opioid poisoning -- in case they receive a contaminated ballot.

A large part of her working life is now spent explaining the voting process to members of the public, and reassuring them that it is safe and secure.

“For the most part, I think people are willing to talk,” she said. 

But some just cannot be convinced.

“No matter how much I try and tell them the facts,” Burgans said, “they still want to believe the misinformation that they have been given.”