Growing violence and harassment have driven half of the top election officials in nearly a dozen states to quit their jobs since Donald Trump refused to acknowledge his defeat by Joe Biden in 2020.
Around 50 percent of high-ranking public officials have left election administration posts in 11 states since November 2020, Politico reports, citing a new study by bipartisan political reform group Issue One.
Covering Arizona, Wyoming, California, Washington, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Oregon, New Mexico, Montana and Nevada, the report apparently found that trend has only accelerated, with a 10 percent uptick in departures since 2023.
A separate study by counter-extremist think tank the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), likewise, found that violent rhetoric toward public officials shot up more than 200 percent between 2024 and 2025 compared to 2021 and 2022.
“There’s a real problem here,” ISD CEO Sasha Havlicek told Politico. “People feel emboldened to speak in certain ways because of the anonymity of online environments that perhaps wouldn’t mirror the way that they behave in their daily lives.”
Critics have repeatedly argued that few public figures have done more to normalize violent rhetoric than Trump.
The MAGA leader has, over the years, threatened to literally execute elected Democratic officials, cast his critics as “the enemy within” and “vermin” to be “rooted out,” and warned of a “bloodbath” should he lose the 2024 election.
He has also targeted electoral infrastructure in the United States over his false and widely debunked claims of victory at the 2020 presidential polls.
Trump lost that election. Joe Biden won it by 74 Electoral College votes, and 4.5 percent of the popular vote.
Trump’s efforts to relitigate the results saw Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard attending an FBI raid last week involving election records linked to the 2020 election.
Gabbard was spotted at the election facility in Fulton County, Georgia, where the president was previously charged with attempting to overturn his defeat.
The county has long served as a centerpiece of MAGA conspiracy theories, featuring bogus claims about suitcases of fraudulent ballots and illegal late-night counts that Republican poll-watchers were excluded from.
FBI agents are understood to have removed ballots, voting machine tapes, voter rolls and other records from the facility last week.
Gabbard has also reportedly spoken with foreign representatives about unproven allegations of interference in the 2020 election and is thought to be preparing a report on her findings.
Critics have raised concerns that those efforts may well serve as a prelude to executive orders on voter regulations ahead of this year’s midterms, which otherwise promise an uphill struggle for the Republican Party.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment on this story.
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