Voter intimidation: pressure on voters and on the people who run elections

In plain words

Voter intimidation is any threat, pressure, or show of force meant to stop people from voting, change how they vote, or stop officials from running an election fairly. In the United States it is a federal crime, and in recent years surveys of local election officials have documented high levels of threats and harassment aimed at the people who count the votes.

Most people picture intimidation as someone menacing voters at a polling place. That still happens, but it is only part of the picture. Pressure can come through threats online, at someone’s home, or against election workers. It can also be in the eye of the beholder: one person’s “watching to make sure it is fair” is another person’s “standing there to scare me.” That is why this problem is hard. Everyone opposes intimidation. People disagree about where the line is.

The problem, stated precisely

Voter intimidation, as this page uses the term, covers three kinds of pressure:

1. Pressure on voters to stay home, to vote a certain way, or to give up a ballot, through threats, force, or the display of force.
2. Pressure on election workers and officials through threats, harassment, or abuse meant to change how they run, count, or certify an election, or to drive them out of the job.
3. Pressure that targets groups, where intimidation is aimed at voters of a particular race, language, neighborhood, or political view.

This page is about intimidation as a public problem: its history, its measured scale, and the policy debate. How coercion works mechanically, why secrecy defeats it, and why remote voting reopens the problem are covered in the Trust chapter on intimidation, coercion, and vote buying. The historical exclusion of voters through law, such as literacy tests, is covered in access and exclusion.

Defined terms

• Voter intimidation. Threats, coercion, or attempts to do either, aimed at interfering with a person’s right to vote. U.S. federal law prohibits anyone, “whether acting under color of law or otherwise,” from intimidating, threatening, or coercing another person “for the purpose of interfering with the right of such other person to vote” in federal elections.⁠¹
• Poll watcher, observer, or challenger. A person authorized under state law, usually by a party or candidate, to observe voting or counting and, in some states, to challenge a voter’s eligibility. Roles vary by state.⁠²
• Campaign-free zone. An area around a polling place where campaigning is restricted. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld a 100-foot zone in 1992.⁠³
• Harassment (of election officials). In the Brennan Center’s survey, “persistent, uninvited behavior, attention, or actions that cause distress, fear, or discomfort, such as stalking”.⁠⁴
• Threat. In the same survey, “explicit or implicit expressions communicating an intention to harm, injure, or cause damage” to a person or those associated with them.⁠⁴

Evidence

History: intimidation at the center of exclusion

The U.S. Supreme Court’s 1992 plurality in Burson v. Freeman traced the history of American polling places from open voting and party-printed ballots through the late 1800s, describing widespread bribery and intimidation before secret-ballot reforms, and concluding that “some restricted zone is necessary” to protect voters.⁠³ The U.S. Department of Justice’s history of federal voting rights law describes “systematic resistance to the Fifteenth Amendment” lasting “nearly a century,” and cites “the murder of voting-rights activists in Philadelphia, Mississippi” among the violence that preceded the Voting Rights Act of 1965.⁠⁵ Intimidation was not a side effect of exclusion in that era; it was one of its main tools. The secret ballot’s role in reducing it is covered on the secret ballot.

Internationally: intimidation as violence at scale

Elsewhere, intimidation has reached mass violence. Human Rights Watch reported in March 2008 that after Kenya’s December 2007 election, “Two months of bloodshed left over 1,000 dead and up to 500,000 internally displaced persons”.⁠⁶ Cases like this are reminders that intimidation is not limited to individual acts at a polling place, and that election disputes can trigger violence that reaches people who were never near a ballot box.

Today in the United States: voters

The scale of intimidation experienced by U.S. voters today is not well measured, and honesty requires saying so. The Survey of the Performance of American Elections, run after each federal election since 2008 with about 200 registered voters per state, is “dedicated explicitly to understanding how voters themselves experience the election process”.⁠⁷ It measures voter experience broadly, but its public project page does not report a national intimidation rate, and this page makes no claim about one. Reports from hotlines and advocacy groups exist, but complaints are not a measured rate, because people who are intimidated may not report, and some reports describe conduct that is lawful.

Today in the United States: election officials

The pressure on the people who run elections is better measured. The Brennan Center surveyed local election officials between February 23 and March 28, 2024, with 928 respondents drawn from a list of 11,678 officials, weighted by region and jurisdiction size, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.⁠⁴ In its reweighted results, 36 percent of local election officials reported experiencing threats, harassment, or abuse, 53 percent were concerned about the safety of colleagues and staff, and 27 percent were concerned about family members being threatened or harassed.⁠⁴ The Brennan Center’s initial May 2024 announcement reported the threats, harassment, or abuse figure as 38 percent and said more than one-third of officials knew someone who had left the job at least partly over safety concerns, up from 22 percent in 2023.⁠⁸ Among the 105 officials who said they had been threatened, 45 percent said they did not report the threat to law enforcement, and 69 percent of all officials answering a separate question said they felt threats had increased since 2020.⁠⁴

Two cautions apply. The survey is an opt-in response to an emailed invitation, weighted to the population of officials, so nonresponse could push the estimate in either direction (see measurement). And it measures officials’ own reports, not verified incidents.

Causes and competing explanations

• Stakes and distrust. When people believe an election may be stolen, some feel justified in pressuring those who run it. This connects intimidation to trust in elections and misinformation.
• Polarization. When the other side is seen as a threat rather than an opponent, the cost of losing feels higher, which can lower the bar for aggressive behavior. See polarization.
• Visibility of officials. Online platforms make it easy to find and contact individual election workers, which may explain why threats now arrive by phone, social media, and at home. The Brennan survey asked about each of these channels.⁠⁴
• Weak deterrence. If nearly half of threats go unreported,⁠⁴ few lead to consequences, and the deterrent effect of criminal law is limited.
• Ambiguous conduct. Much of what people call intimidation is lawful observation, lawful challenge, or protected speech near a polling place. The legal line is drawn by state law and the First Amendment, and reasonable people disagree about it.

Who is harmed

Voters in groups historically targeted by intimidation bear the clearest historical harm.⁠⁵ Voters who already face ballot access barriers, such as limited-English voters and voters with disabilities, may be more vulnerable to aggressive challenges. Election officials and workers bear the documented present-day harm, and if experienced staff leave, every voter may bear the cost in mistakes and delays (see election administration funding). Finally, the public loses when observers from any side feel unwelcome, because observation is one of the ways elections earn trust.

What has been tried elsewhere

Criminal statutes. U.S. federal law prohibits intimidation in federal elections,⁠¹ and the Trust chapter lists further federal provisions. Results: the statutes define the wrong clearly. Limits: proving intent is hard and, as the survey data suggest, many incidents are never reported.⁠⁴

Campaign-free zones. By the time of Burson v. Freeman in 1992, all 50 states limited access to areas in or around polling places, and the Court upheld Tennessee’s 100-foot zone in 1992.⁠³ Results: the zones create a clear buffer. Limits: the dissent argued the plurality “confuses history with necessity,” and zones do nothing about threats made away from the polls.⁠³

Rules for poll watchers and challengers. Nearly every state permits partisan observers, and many specify what they may not do. NCSL’s survey of state laws notes, for example, that Ohio observers may not “intimidate, harass, or attempt to influence voters,” and South Carolina watchers may not “verbally harass or intimidate election workers, voters, or other persons in the polling place”.⁠² Results: the rules protect both observation and voters. Limits: enforcement depends on poll workers making judgments in the moment.

Speech limits that are clear. In Minnesota Voters Alliance v. Mansky (2018), the Supreme Court struck down a ban on “political” apparel in polling places because the term was too indeterminate, while accepting that a state may keep polling places free of partisan discord if it uses “objective, workable standards”.⁠⁹ Lesson: rules meant to prevent intimidation must be precise, or they become a tool for arbitrary enforcement.

Protecting candidates and campaigners. The United Kingdom’s Elections Act 2022 requires courts, with limited exceptions, to disqualify people convicted of certain offences aggravated by hostility toward candidates, office holders, or campaigners from elective office “for the period of 5 years”.⁠¹⁰ Results and limits: it targets a narrow class of offenders and depends on conviction.

Security investment in election offices. In the 2024 Brennan survey, 92 percent of local officials said they had taken steps since 2020 to improve security for voters, workers, and infrastructure.⁠⁴ Whether those steps reduced threats is not established by the survey.

Competing interpretations

The protection-first view argues that intimidation is under-enforced, that the history of violence against voters justifies strong buffers and strict watcher rules, and that the documented harassment of election officials is an emergency for democratic administration.⁠^8,5

The transparency-first view argues that observation is one of the most important trust safeguards an election has, that state law in nearly every state gives parties the right to watch,⁠² and that broad accusations of intimidation can be used to keep legitimate observers away. On this view, the answer to distrust is more access for observers from every side, with clear conduct rules, not fewer observers.

The free-speech view argues that speech near polling places and political expression by voters are protected, and that vague bans invite selective enforcement, which the Supreme Court found in Mansky.⁠⁹ Supporters of this view accept buffers but insist on precise lines.

The measurement-skeptic view argues that without a reliable national measure of voter intimidation, both alarm and dismissal outrun the evidence. Officials’ self-reports are valuable but are not verified incidents, and complaints to hotlines are not rates.⁠^4,7

These views are compatible more often than debates suggest: clear conduct rules for observers, clear speech lines, real enforcement for threats, and better measurement are supported by people who start from each of them.

Application to this framework

My Vote Forward’s design starts from the same principle that defeats intimidation in the polling booth: a person cannot be punished for what cannot be seen. In private voting, the vote is never public and its privacy cannot be switched off. In opinions, sharing is voluntary and specific, which limits the exposure that invites retaliation. The privacy and consent chapters set out what is never published. The mechanics of coercion and remote voting limits are on intimidation, coercion, and vote buying.

Unresolved questions

• What would a reliable national measure of voter intimidation look like, and who should run it without partisan suspicion?
• Where exactly should the line between lawful observation and intimidation be drawn, and can it be drawn in terms a poll worker can apply in the moment?
• Do security investments and state worker-protection laws reduce threats, or only make officials feel safer? The 2024 survey does not answer this.⁠⁴
• How should threats made online, far from any polling place, be handled when they target the people who count votes?