Being an election worker is becoming an increasingly dangerous job nationwide — in Texas in particular. And Texas Secretary of State John Scott is pointing a finger for this alarming trend squarely in Alex Jones’ direction.
In a new interview with Texas Monthly, senior editor Michael Hardy chatted with Scott about a recent report from the Brennan Center for Justice, which determined that one in every six election workers has been threatened because of their job. And how one Texas county just lost three of its top election officials because of increasing unease they felt in their positions. “It’s a huge problem,” said Scott.
When Scott claimed not to understand the reason behind these worrying statistics, Hardy suggested that “Surely former President Trump’s repeated claims of a stolen election have something to do with it.” But Scott, a Republican, wasn’t ready to take the bait. As he sees it:
Any time the temperature gets turned up, it’s possible to have nuts making these statements. At least in our office, what I was told is that these threats long preceded the 2020 election. The Infowars guy [Alex Jones] has unleashed hell on our election people. This has been going on for many years. And I don’t want to give a free pass to people who are crazy enough to go out there and say they’re going to kill somebody because they’re doing their job. I don’t want to give them an excuse — “Oh, well, it’s because somebody said something.” No, that behavior is unacceptable under any scenario. Just because somebody said something, or they saw something on TV, that doesn’t excuse it.
Scott says he knows several colleagues who have begun carrying a gun to work for their own protection. And while he understands the reasoning behind it — “I’ve gotten death threats; my folks in the elections division have gotten death threats” — he also thinks it’s “absurd” that it has come to this. “This is insanity,” he said. “You can’t have people receiving death threats for doing their jobs.”
(Via Texas Monthly)