Colorado Public Radio has a story on privacy protections (and concerns) with respect to the voter rolls, the state’s campaign finance database, and beyond.
Nearly 9 in 10 state lawmakers reported facing insults and 4 in 10 facing harassment and threats.
And these threats aren’t evenly distributed:
Women were three to four times more likely than men to experience abuse related to their gender, according to the report. And people of color were more than three times as likely as white officeholders to endure race-based abuse.
Washington Post reports talk in Congress of putting in place procedures to fill vacancies if its members are assassinated in ways that upend the functioning of Congress. Similar discussions occurred after 9/11, according to the article. A plan would likely require a constitutional amendment. Still, the concern is this:
“‘We have a succession plan for the president,’ Wenstrup said at a House Administration Committee hearing in September focused on political violence.
But there is no plan to easily replace one or multiple House members should the worst happen. The Constitution requires the states to pull together a special election tofill individual vacancies, something that takes anywhere from three months to sometimes a year.
When there’s a clear, large House majority for one party, such a prolonged vacancy makes little difference to the institution at large.But now, after three straight elections left one party with just single-digit control of the lower chamber, every seat canmean the difference between majority control and legislation passing or failing.
‘The status quo also creates a perverse incentive for political violence through targeted killings designed to switch the majority party in the House,’ Kilmer said at last fall’s hearing.”
The Washington Post offers a lengthy treatment of issues and includes text from group chats among concerned lawmakers.
“State lawmakers — who tend to be far more accessible than their federal counterparts — are weighing new safety precautions and considering whether they should erect new barriers with voters to protect themselves from the public. They see changes as inevitable, but some fear they could chip away at their ability to connect with their communities and hear directly from the citizens they represent.”
“Threats to state lawmakers have drawn less attention but are common. In a 2023 Brennan Center survey of 354 state legislators from around the country, 43 percent said they had faced threats.”
“Utah Sen. Mike Lee, amid widespread outrage, has deleted a pair of social media posts associating the deadly Minnesota shootings last weekend with ‘Marxists’ and the state’s Democratic governor.”
Washington Post: Senator Tina Smith of Minnesota seeks out Senator Mike Lee to reproach him for his reckless comments.
“Smith walked briskly across the chamber and out into the hall and asked where Lee had gone. She said she found him in a nearby room . . . She asked to talk with him.
I said, ‘People like you and me don’t talk to each other that much, but this feels like something that we really need to talk about face to face,’” Smith said.
The brief conversation was a remarkable moment at a time of intense partisan antipathy — and a reminder that Republican and Democratic senators are in some ways bound together by growing concern for their safety.”
“The Colorado Secretary of State temporarily removed its public campaign finance database from the internet Saturday amid concerns it could reveal home addresses and other personal information about state lawmakers and other officials.
“The big picture: The Minnesota shootings exposed the delicate balance between public safety and the personal privacy of state lawmakers and other top officials.
Other states moved quickly to increase security by adding patrols near the homes of state lawmakers and removing online personal information, according to multiple media reports.
NY Times. From Jamie Raskin to Chief Justice Roberts to a variety of election officials you have never heard of, these few quotes say it all.
“Public officials from Congress to City Hall are now regularly subjected to threats of violence. It’s changing how they do their jobs.”
“By almost all measures, the evidence of the trend is striking. Last year, more than 450 federal judges were targeted with threats, a roughly 150 percent increase from 2019, according to the United States Marshals Service. The U.S. Capitol Police investigated more than 8,000 threats to members of Congress last year, up more than 50 percent from 2018. The agency recently added three full-time prosecutors to handle the volume.”