A security fence surrounds a Las Vegas building where Nevada is recording votes. An Arizona sheriff has his department on alert to guard against potential violence with drones and snipers on standby. The governors of at least three states have called in National Guard troops to help keep the peace.
As a tense America votes for either Republican Donald Trump or Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris for president, concerns about potential political violence have prompted officials to take various measures to increase security during and after Election Day.
Many of the most visible movements can be seen in battleground states that will decide the presidential election, states like Nevada where protests erupted from supporters of former President Donald Trump after the 2020 election.
This year, a security fence is hitting the scene of some of those protests — the Las Vegas sorting center. Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo said last week that he had activated a “limited team” of 60 National Guard members to ensure a timely response to any challenges.
In Arizona, a similar metal fence has been erected at the Maricopa County voter registration center in downtown Phoenix, a 2020 flashpoint for vote-rigging conspiracy theories and threats against election officials.
Sheriff Russ Skinner said his department will be on “high alert” for threats and violence and has instructed personnel to be available for duty.
“We’re going to have a lot of resources out there, a lot of personnel, a lot of equipment,” he added, noting that deputies will use drones to monitor activity around polling places and snipers and other reinforcements will be ready to deploy if violence is likely.
He said “polarization” becomes more intense in the days after the election, so law enforcement will remain on heightened alert and “there will be zero tolerance for anything related to criminal activity.”
Concerned about the possibility of protests or even violence, several Arizona schools and churches that served as voting centers in the past will not operate polling stations this year, a local Arizona election official told Reuters.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which has more than 400,000 members in Arizona, has offered several polling locations to fill the void.
About a dozen community leaders from across the state and from a variety of political backgrounds and cultures have formed a committee to focus on curbing political violence, according to member Jane Andersen, a member of the LDS Church and Arizona Democracy Advocacy Specialist at Mormon Women for Ethical Government.
The group is ready to tap into a wide network, including religious leaders, who can help spread factual information to counter disinformation-fueled unrest.
In the 2020 battleground state of Michigan, Trump supporters descended on a convention hall in downtown Detroit and began banging on windows as absentee ballot counting continued for a second day. Yellow bike racks this year returned to both sides of the avenue on which it is located.
Visitors must pass through metal detectors and about 15 police officers patrol the cave hall. Daniel Baxter, Detroit’s chief operating officer for absentee ballots and special projects, said police are also on the roof and surrounding the building. Eight days of early pre-processing of mail-in ballots went smoothly, Baxter said.
Peter Simi, a sociology professor at Chapman University in California who has researched threats against public officials, said the worst-case scenario would be for Trump to lose and not admit defeat.
Instead of a repeat of the 2021 attack on the US Capitol by Trump supporters, he said the conflict could be “dispersed, diffuse events in multiple locations” that would be more difficult for law enforcement to deal with.
The precautions extend beyond the battleground states. Authorities in the states of Oregon and Washington said they have activated the National Guard. Some storefronts in Washington, DC and elsewhere have been covered with plywood.
Back in Las Vegas, Faviola Garibay surveyed the security fence around the linen building where Clark County officials tally the votes and where voters like her can cast ballots.
“The fencing, the police presence here, it seems safe,” he said. “I feel safe voting.”
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