An 18-year-old man was arrested in Florida on Tuesday for threatening two supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris with a machete outside an early-voting site, the latest in a series of threats or attacks surrounding early and mail voting.
The episode happened around 4 p.m. in Neptune Beach, Fla., a small city east of Jacksonville. The man, whom the police identified as Caleb James Williams, arrived at a voting site at the city’s Beaches Branch Library with seven companions. The group carried flags supporting former President Donald J. Trump and confronted people holding Harris signs outside the library.
After exchanging words with a 54-year-old woman and a 71-year-old woman, Mr. Williams brandished a machete at them, according to the Neptune Beach police chief, Michael J. Key Jr. Police officers responded quickly to a 911 call.
A video provided by the chairman of the Duval County Democratic Party shows Mr. Williams and his companions cheering raucously and waving Trump flags. Mr. Williams holds a machete in the video.
“The group arrived to protest and antagonize the opposing political side,” Chief Key said at a news conference on Tuesday, adding that the group had gone to the early-voting site “for no other reason.”
Mr. Williams has been charged with aggravated assault on a person 65 or older and with improper exhibition of a firearm or dangerous weapon. Chief Key said that his companions were 16 and 17 years old and that officers believed their actions “did not cross the criminal threshold,” though he noted that the investigation was still active.
A call to a phone number listed for Mr. Williams’s family was not immediately returned on Wednesday. Records with the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office did not list a lawyer for him.
Daniel Henry, the chairman of the Duval County Democratic Party, said in a statement: “Violence and intimidation have no place in our democratic process. The Duval County Democratic Party stands with those who seek to express their views peacefully and without fear of reprisal.”
The county Republican Party released a statement referring to the assassination attempts against Mr. Trump in July and September, criticizing Democrats for describing some Republicans as Nazis and concluding, “We urge calm.” It did not address Mr. Williams’s and his companions’ Trump paraphernalia.
Other episodes of violence, or threats thereof, have occurred across the country in the past few weeks of early and mail voting. Early on Monday, someone set ballot drop boxes on fire in Portland, Ore., and Vancouver, Wash., and a similar arson attack was reported last week on a United States Postal Service mailbox in Phoenix.
Four years ago, after Mr. Trump repeatedly promoted lies that the 2020 election had been stolen from him, poll workers, secretaries of state and other election officials faced a barrage of threats, and his supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Officials are bracing for the possibility of similar threats and attacks this year.
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