Federal proposals that would have significantly boosted security funding for election offices and heightened penalties for threatening their staff failed to advance this year, leaving state officials looking to their legislatures for support.
The massive budget bill that passed Congress on Friday will send $75 million in election security grants to states, an amount that falls far short of what many officials had sought as state and local election workers have been targeted with harassment and even death threats since the 2020 presidential election. They also were disappointed that proposals to make such threats a federal crime with more severe penalties fizzled.
Absent federal action, several state election officials — many of whom have faced an unrelenting wave of attacks for two years — say they plan to push their lawmakers to increase protections for themselves, their staffs and those who run elections at the local level. Some of them were confronted by angry protesters in public and even outside their homes who were motivated by former President Donald Trump’s false claims that his reelection had been stolen.