A Tough Election Day

It’s not the election day we were hoping for, but it’s also not over yet. I’m writing at 11 p.m. and while it looks dark at the moment, key states remain close and undecided. We likely won’t know the result for certain before tomorrow. But my heart is heavy, thinking that so many people in our country, knowing exactly who Donald Trump is, have voted for him again.

While we all continue to watch the votes come in and worry about the ultimate result, I want to make sure you were aware of a really disturbing development: the plethora of bomb threats at polling places that broke out today.

Why would anyone do that? There are two obvious reasons. First, prevent the people who are already in line from voting but create delays while a polling place is shut down and swept, which takes enough time to ensure that some folks will have to leave. Second, create fear, so that other people will decide it’s too unsafe to go to the polls. In other words, bomb threats at polling places are made by someone with an interest in disrupting an election and keeping people from voting.

But these weren’t just random threats, the work of a lone wolf. According to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, it was Russia that took that approach in Fulton County, Georgia, on election day, targeting polling places where people tend to vote heavily Democratic. The threats were deemed "non-credible" and Fulton County determined that its polling sites were secure. The DNC and the Democratic Party of Georgia went to court to keep the polls open for additional time to make up for what was lost, but it’s hard to accept that American elections are being threatened by Russia. That fact is deeply disturbing.

I don’t have to remind anyone here that in 2016, when Trump publicly called on Russia for help winning the election, they answered the call. “Russia: if you’re listening … ” Trump spent the next four years with pretend outrage over the investigation into Russian interference into our election, calling it a witch hunt and expressing fury such a thing would even be considered. He did that even as he, an American president, cultivated a curious relationship with Vladimir Putin, and as his party, once Russia’s sworn enemy, did an about-face, even to the point of flirting with the abandonment of Ukraine, a victim of Russian aggression.

Fulton County was not the only Georgia County to be targeted, nor was Georgia the only state involved. We don’t know all of the details yet, but it was not an isolated problem.

Only cowards call in bomb threats. I know this because I used to prosecute bombings and bomb threats, and the common thread in the crimes and the criminals is that they want people to be afraid and they want to use that fear to manipulate them. In this situation, they are the antithesis of what our elections are about. They are foreign terrorism. It is an outrage, and the entire country should be jumping up and down about it. But we all know that it’s unlikely that Donald Trump will.

As I write this Tuesday evening, it’s too early to know how this election will turn out. But one thing that’s for certain is that if a hostile foreign power is permitted to threaten our elections without any response, we are in peril. Today, Russia targeted Democratic voters. And how did the RNC, headed by Trump’s daughter in law, Lara Trump, respond? The Republican National Committee and the Georgia Republican Party went to court to oppose the judge’s order to extend voting hours at six DeKalb County, Georgia, polling places that had to evacuate following bomb threats—they opposed a simple measure that would let the people vote in a highly contested state following an attempted attack by a foreign country.

This is a difficult night, and it’s made more difficult still by news of Russia’s attempted attack on our election. Russia doesn’t want Americans to be able to vote. There is a sustained attack on democracy at work on multiple fronts, from people who object to our freedom.

We’re in this together,

Joyce