Election Violence Is Already Here

A man in a white van circled an early voting site in Loxahatchee, Florida, and shouted antisemitic and racist slurs at a group of people campaigning outside. A man who went to vote in Orangeburg, South Carolina, brawled with election workers after he was asked to remove his Trump hat. A man in Tempe, Arizona, was arrested for shooting up a DNC office three times.
These are just some of the disturbing incidents that have taken place in the last 10 days alone.
WIRED is tracking how disinformation and heightened political rhetoric is spilling out into the real world as Election Day nears, manifesting in acts of sabotage, intimidation, and violence. Please reach out via this form with tips.
Authorities are on high alert for election-related violence this year. Since 2020, election workers have faced a constant barrage of threats, harassment, and stalking at such a level that the DOJ formed a special division just to investigate those types of threats. A series of intelligence memos reported by WIRED indicate that officials are bracing for potential chaos and sabotage from “insider threats,” as well as possible attacks on voting infrastructure for the 2024 US election. The V-Dem Institute, a political-science think tank based in Sweden that takes a data-driven approach to evaluating democracies around the world, put out a report predicting a “relatively high likelihood of electoral violence” for the election.
We’ve compiled a total of 13 recent confirmed incidents so far, and we’ll keep updating as we go.