Anxiety runs deep in Georgia as voters worry about heated rhetoric fueling violence – WABE

Four years later, with another election underway, this heated climate has persisted.

Former President Trump has been the target of two assassination attempts, including one at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. that left a man dead. Meanwhile, Trump’s warnings about the potential for voter fraud and language on immigration have fueled threats against poll workers and some immigrant communities.

The FBI warned in an October bulletin to state and local officials across the country, obtained by WABE, that extremists with election grievances could turn to violence in the coming weeks. The bureau called for heightened precautions around possible targets such as polling stations and electoral offices.

“I would think we’re more prepared this time because now, I hate to say it, it’s old hat,” Sterling said in a recent interview. “What worries me is a new tactic.”

Sterling said law enforcement and election officials must be on guard to counter new strategies to undermine the vote. In a security briefing, he recalled that law enforcement suggested parking the cars near a set of windows at a polling station.

“I said, why?” Sterling said. “To protect against a bomb attack. That’s the level we’re at now with some of these things.”

Sterling said dedicated electoral officials are doing everything they can to ensure a smooth election – and that voters should feel safe when casting their ballots. He also hopes that promoting a consistent message of fair elections will eventually break through the milieu of misinformation.

“It’s kind of like the end of ‘Mr. Smith goes to Washington,’ when he’s sitting there fiddling on the floor,” Sterling said, referring to the 1939 Frank Capra film. “And finally, the senators are saying there’s no way he can keep saying these things unless there’s some truth to what he’s saying.”

But that hasn’t happened yet.

Trump has so far refused to say definitively he will accept the results of these elections, saying he will only do so if they are “fair, legal and good elections”. He and his allies have already made false claims about voter fraud, disaster relief and immigrants.

After a grand jury indicted Trump in Georgia on charges of trying to sway the outcome of the 2020 election, to which he pleaded not guilty, jurors received a barrage of online threats.

Already, Georgia Republican U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has amplified a debunked story about a voting machine in Georgia that reversed Trump’s vote for a vote for Vice President Kamala Harris during early voting.

And in recent weeks, Trump-aligned members of the Georgia State Board of Elections have done so adopted rules which appeared to allow members of the local electoral board to vote against the certification of the election results.

When a judge broke these rules, he received death threats online.

“He’s got a huge target on his back”

Four years ago, talk of a stolen election, despite multiple audits and reports to the contrary, helped propel Daryl Kidd to Washington, DC on January 6, where a crowd of Trump supporters violently breached the Capitol.

Wearing a Trump Save America hat outside a Trump rally in Atlanta earlier this month, Kidd said he did not participate in any of the violence that day. But he had doubts about the 2020 election.

“This time, I think it’s going to be safer,” Kidd said. “Anyway, in Georgia, I think she’ll be more protected.”

A controversial overhaul of Georgia’s election laws gave him some credence. Kidd is less certain of other states. He said he would not rule out protesting the result again.

Waiting in line nearby and wearing red, friends Tina McKay and Dorie Walters process the latest political violence – the assassination attempts against Trump. They said the trials gave them pause to come to a campaign rally, but not for long.

“I thought about it when it first happened, I thought how scary it would be, but as soon as I was able to get a ticket here, I didn’t think twice about it,” McKay said . “I’m scared for him because I think he’s got a huge target on his back,” Walters said.

The reasons for the two assassination attempts remain unclear. Walters and McKay, like other voters at the rally, said they blame Democrats, not Trump, for raising the political temperature.

Both campaigns described their opponents as serious threats to the country. But it is Trump who talks about circumventing democratic norms and uses language laced with violent imagery, personal attacks and incendiary claims. His former chief of staff, John Kelly, in remarks published by The New York Times this week, called Trump a “fascist.”

At his rally in Atlanta, Trump asked supporters to help “defeat the enemy at all levels of battle.”

Some of his harshest rhetoric has targeted immigrants. At a rally on Thursday, he blamed Harris for “an invasion of criminal migrants”, saying the US had become a “trash bin for the world”.

For Daniela Usurin, who is originally from Uruguay, Trump’s tough attitude is welcome.

Usurin said illegal immigration reflects poorly on immigrants like her. But Trump has also made false claims about migrants who are in the country legally. From the debate stage, he amplified a false story about migrants in Springfield, Ohio, eating cats and dogs. The community was overwhelmed with bomb threats.

“As far as these issues in Ohio, I really can’t say what the reality is,” Usurin said.

The reality is that city and state officials have debunked the claims as false. But many at Trump’s rally say they believe him, or at least the campaign’s description of the country facing an invasion of illegal immigrants.

Many immigrant communities are afraid.

“It just drives us further apart”

At a recent Kicking off the Democratic rally at Peachy Corners Cafe in suburban Atlanta, Trump’s rhetoric weighed on many of the volunteers picking up campaign flyers, Vietnamese coffee and bubble tea.

“It just divides us further, so unnecessarily, with these non-truths and made-up stories,” said Tahmida Shamsuddin, who immigrated from Bangladesh two decades ago.

“And I never felt like I was less than because I came here and got an education and got a job and became what I hope to be a contributing citizen. It’s personal to me and it’s painful,” she said.

While Shamsuddin, who was wearing a Harris-Walz camouflage hat, is busy campaigning, she said knocking on strangers’ doors to talk about the election can cause anxiety in this environment.

In a high peak next to the espresso machine, Tha Vin said he just came to a quiet place to read his comics. He said language to describe immigrants shapes his vote.

“I’m a gun owner, as I discovered I want to vote Republican,” Vin said. “But the rhetoric toward immigrants was something that made me not want to vote Republican.”

Vin came to the U.S. as a refugee from Cambodia in 1980. He said he fled an authoritarian regime. Preservation of democracy is one of the issues that motivates him.

Vin fondly remembers his family receiving a welcome basket within days of arriving in the US. He feels the spirit is gone now. But he said the political climate made him more determined to vote. He’s fighting over the schedule of his son, niece and nephew, who turned 18 this year, so they can go vote as a family.

“We want to do a big deal,” he said. “I want us as a family to vote symbolically in a way that shows we are a part of this country.”

Vin said he sees his vote as more than a choice for president. For him, it’s a way of asserting that he belongs to the country that gave him refuge all those years ago.