TRUTH OR DARE

Tina Barton

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a new report about the 2020 election in mid-July, reporting that “Election officials faced unprecedented challenges in conducting the 2020 elections during the COVID-19 pandemic.” Several Michigan election officials have let it be known that after the election, they faced threats, including death threats. Former Rochester Hills Clerk Tina Barton, now a senior elections expert with The Elections Group, received a voicemail filled with explicit language threatening her family. Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson had to call the police after armed protesters yelled outside her home in Detroit where she was reading bedtime stories to her young son. Now, 22 election deniers are running for secretary of state across the country – including in Michigan, with Republican candidate Kristina Karamo, and while secretaries of state do not count votes, they certify elections. “When you have officials who don’t view voters as customers of the process, but view voters as criminal suspects, that’s a really dangerous thing,” said Jason Kander, former Secretary of State for Missouri and author of The Invisible Storm, on MSNBC.