North Carolina election workers should be thanked, not intimidated and threatened

Now that the 2022 midterm election results here in North Carolina have been officially certified by the state board of elections, we can focus on the unsung (and unfairly oft-maligned) heroes – our state’s election workers.

These workers are essential to making sure that all North Carolinians who go to vote in an election are able to successfully let their voices be heard and have their votes counted. They have an assortment of different responsibilities, such as staffing polling locations, setting up voting stations, assisting voters and tallying votes after the election. 

In a recent interview with WUNC, volunteer precinct judges – both Democrat and Republican – expressed the belief that the election process is accurate, secure and taken extremely seriously by volunteers.

As Voting Booth wrote last week, one of the most concerning takeaways from the 2022 election “is that election-denying partisans still do not know how elections work.” We can “thank” Trump and MAGA extremists for this willful lack of knowledge – their two-year campaign of baseless accusations has been very effective.

According to WRAL, “[s]tate-level law enforcement units created after the 2020 presidential election to investigate voter fraud…have provided no indication of systemic problems.”

Instead of being harassed, accused of trying to alter votes, threatened or intimidated, Americans should thank their local election workers for their hard work in making sure every vote is counted.