Kathy Boockvar recently spoke with Stateline to discuss the significant challenges faced by election officials during the past four years, including threats, harassment, and intentional disinformation campaigns, largely fueled by false claims of election fraud. While there were countless claims of fraud in the lead up to this year’s Election Day, once results began to become clear, fraud claims seemed to disappear, because those who had been peddling false claims largely won their 2024 races.
Some have queried whether this will be the end of false attacks on election officials and operations and whether we will see restoration of faith in our elections. However, Boockvar and other election experts cautioned that Trump’s rhetoric and actions have caused lasting damage to trust in our systems, and underscore the ongoing struggle to ensure public confidence in U.S. elections.
“Will there be a bump, maybe, because some of these folks now saw their candidate that they wanted to win? Sure,” she told Stateline. “There may be a bump in trust, but it’s not going to erase years and years of intentional dividing American against American, and intentional fueling of distrust of institutions and media.”
Boockvar added that the crises of the past four years did cause election officials to be more prepared for a range of threats, and she noted the important work of the bipartisan and cross-sector Committee for Safe and Secure Elections (CSSE) [link]. CSSE, in partnership with local and state officials, developed state by state pocket-size guides to election laws, as well as conducted tabletop exercises and other trainings for law enforcement and election officials across the country.
Read the full article here: https://stateline.org/2024/11/08/after-a-bruising-4-years-a-hope-for-normalcy-in-american-elections/