WASHINGTON – It’s been a year since the 2020 elections, but Maricopa County Supervisor Clint Hickman said he continues to get threats for his part in certifying the election.
“We’ve been at this for a year, and it’s difficult,” Hickman said Tuesday during a Washington Post Live forum on the aftermath of the Jan. 6 riots.
Hickman said the anger began election night and escalated after Jan. 6, when he arrived home to find police guarding his house. Besides the personal impact, he said the abuse is beginning to take its toll on election workers who are quitting because they “don’t want to take the abuse, and they want to stand down.”
“That’s the problem I’m seeing with public service,” Hickman said. “We are losing competent election workers across the United States because they just can’t take the threats.”
That reaction is not surprising, said Keith Allred, executive director for the National Institute for Civil Discourse at the University of Arizona.
“Most people aren’t going to want to deal with death threats when they’re just doing their job,” Allred said. “When it turns to not only being ugly speech, but threats of violence and actual violence, what reasonable person isn’t going to consider that? It’s going to make it harder for good people to think about public service.”
Allred said threats like those leveled at Hickman and other county and state officials have never been an effective way to spread a message or change minds, and never will.
“You’re going to hurt your own cause and your own message by threatening violence. That never has worked in a republic, it can’t ever work,” he said.
“You’re going to turn people away more than attract people to your side. For no other reason, it’s just not practical to engage in those kinds of threats of violence,” Allred said.
Hickman said he started getting phone calls from voters as he was watching returns come in on election night. What started as “just education questions” from voters about a different style of Maricopa County ballot, turned into “full-fledged fury that night” when Fox News called Arizona for President Joe Biden, he said.
Hickman served as board chairman last year and said he was relieved to hand over the reins this year to current Chairman Jack Sellers, after a year grappling with an election and the COVID-19 pandemic. When Jan. 6 came, he said, he was relieved he was not still chairman.
“We had so many different things to think about, and I was just beat. I was exhausted,” Hickman said. “I knew that we had a new chairman coming in and I just felt a little bit of relief driving in, that instead of my hand being on the tip of the spear, it was going to be on the shield with my other guys.
“I felt really good driving home until I saw the protection unit at my house,” he said.
He said the police that night advised him and his family not to stay at their home, which he agreed to do after seeing how police units elsewhere were becoming targets.
Donell Harvin, former director of intelligence at the D.C. Office of Homeland Security, said he warned other federal law enforcement agencies about the possibility of violence on Jan. 6. Harvin, who was part of Tuesday’s panel, praised the response of officials like Hickman to the violence.
“One of the lessons that I learned on Jan. 6 is that if it weren’t for people like Clint, we would not live in a democracy,” said Harvin, who is now a senior policy researcher at RAND Corp. “People like Clint, civil servants, who show up and do this very difficult work, with at times personal expense to their own safety, really define what a democracy is in the rule of law.”
But Hickman said others in public service should not have to deal with the threats he has, no matter their political ideology.
“I’ll do it gladly and take the threats for them so I can keep good, solid people working in those departments doing their civic duties. Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, I’m going to do my best,” said Hickman, a Republican.
More than once, he mentioned putting political party differences aside, a position Allred said most people agree with.
“The vast majority of Americans still believe that we should put country ahead of party and that we should not resort to violence to resolve our differences,” Allred said.
Hickman ended the forum with an appeal to “become Americans again.”
“We are Americans first,” he said. “I have a son that’s 16 and another that’s 14. I don’t want to send my son off to war to fight some foreign enemy to feel like an American again, and I damn sure don’t want him fighting fellow Americans to prove just how American he is. It’s just not the way to go.”
For more stories from Cronkite News, visit cronkitenews.azpbs.org.
This article appears in Oct 28 – Nov 3, 2021.
All those who claim election fraud should move to countries who hold elections in line with their beliefs. Iran, Burma, China, Belarus, and Russia come to mind. Ideology means nothing to autocrats, its just a coat of convenience to put on when necessary for the rubes.
Thanks a lot Frances. Hiding your head in the sand does not make others wrong. You are oblivious to the evidence.
Dear Fraud. There is no evidence other than in the ones in fantasyland.
Multiple claims of election fraud have been logged in NJ Governors race. And now the den claims he just FOUND 12000 votes.
Wake up America, we are under assault from the criminals.
Maricopa Co. destroyed the evidence. Does anybody have the nuts to ask why?
Republicans cry “election fraud” only in races they lose.
And then they try to pass laws that tilt the scales in their favor for any future races.
The real election fraud took place in 2000. 😒
Mr. Hickman, you failed to perform at a minimal level. First, you illegally refused to cooperate at all and were slapped down by the courts.
Then, you refused to cooperate at even a minimal level.
Instead of producing a state of the art model for auditing an election smoothly and seamlessly, you created chaos but not allowing the expertise of your departments to flow into the audit.
Refuse to answer questions? Refuse to negotiate procedures? Really?
Let me assure you, all of the Republican members of the Board of Supervisors will all be gone after they stand for election.
The auditing procedures you use to verify elections are no longer statistically valid in the era of mass mail-in ballots and voting centers. How do I know? I negotiated those procedures in 2006, 14 years ago.
You claim that a series of inexpensive tests can validate voting machines to accurately count votes, yet you are throwing away $8 million of machines which can pass those tests, saying they can no longer be trusted.
$8 million????!!! You have taxpayers who walk to work because they can’t afford a car.
Quit your whining. You chose to make a mess when you could have had an orderly process.
I know, I know there is no fraud out there.
After analyzing Michigan’s voter rolls and verifiable death records, The Public Interest Legal Foundation revealed that, as of August 2021:
25,975 potentially deceased registrants are on Michigan’s voter rolls.
23,663 of those deceased registrants have been dead for five years or more.
It just looks like it. But we can trust that swing state that produced MORE votes in the wee hours of the morning, right?
The democrats are going to take care of us.
https://twitter.com/Ablonde20211/status/1456631801271574534
I watched the video B Miller and she is fall down drunk. How long will Americans tolerate these losers?
Get yourself some help lady and take Hunter with you.
“Republicans cry “election fraud” only in races they lose.”
Nope.
“Democratic candidate in a legislative race in the town of Windham requested a recount. That recount showed Republican candidates getting hundreds more votes than were originally counted.”
The infallible machines made a large number of errors in a New Hampshire legislative race. The Dem asked for an audit, the legislature gave it to her. She lost by a much larger number of votes after the audit.
“All those who claim election fraud should move to countries who hold elections in line with their beliefs. Iran, Burma, China, Belarus, and Russia”
The left, people like Francis Perkins, supported policies in Russia that completely destroyed it. In 1910, Russia had an economy just as large as the U.S. and a population just as large as ours.
Today? Our stock market is $48 trillion, two and a half times larger than what it was before Trump’s tax cuts. Russia? Doesn’t even have a stock market worth $1 trillion.
Today? Our population is 323 million while Russia’s population is 140 million, less than half of ours.
Today? Our economy is $21 trillion while Russia’s economy is 1.5 trillion, yes 1.5 trillion.
Liberal Democrats love to demonize Russia after spending 80 years adoring them for their communist principles.
Frances would love to hold Tucson up as a sterling example, a city which has fewer jobs today than it had in 2007, 14 years ago.
Good luck with that job destroying $15 an hour minimum wage.