Newsweek: How MAGA Election Watchers Are Scaring Away Voters

People with guns standing watch at ballot boxes. Voters being filmed or harassed as they go to cast their ballot. They’re images reminiscent of life under an authoritarian regime, not a reflection of modern-day America.

Nonetheless, local and federal law enforcement in Arizona have been alarmed by recent reports of people, some of them armed, watching 24-hour ballot drop boxes in two of the state’s counties. This has raised concerns about voter intimidation by MAGA-linked groups during the midterm elections.

So how worried should voters be? Newsweek has spoken to election experts and their message is: Don’t be intimidated. While expressing serious concern over the reports, they are urging voters not to let “a small faction of extremists” scare them away from exercising their democratic rights—and warn that exaggerating the problem may be playing into the hands of those who want to discredit midterms results. …

Suzanne Almeida, the director of state operations at nonpartisan watchdog Common Cause, agreed. “It’s obviously something we’re concerned about. Everyone has the right to vote free from intimidation […] but this isn’t a national wave of people who are armed at ballot boxes,” Almeida told Newsweek.

“As we are talking about it, if we are thinking there are armed people at drop boxes everywhere, it’s going to make it less likely for voters to vote,” she said. That is “doing the job of the folks who want to be intimidating for them.” …

Almeida said if the ballot drop box a voter wants to use doesn’t feel safe, they should head to a different one. She said it is likely too close to Election Day to post a ballot in the mail, but that in many states, people can turn it in at elections offices.

“In several states, there’s also a process where you can surrender your vote by mail or absentee ballot and then vote in person on Election Day, if that feels safer,” she said.