Scarred by 2020 smears, voting companies and election officials brace for November

Weeks before the 2022 midterms, a stranger showed up at the Denver headquarters of Dominion Voting Systems. He didn’t have an appointment, so the front desk asked him to leave. But staffers noticed him lingering outside, and one Dominion executive spotted a rifle case and scope in his vehicle.

Weeks before the 2022 midterms, a stranger showed up at the Denver headquarters of Dominion Voting Systems. He didn’t have an appointment, so the front desk asked him to leave. But staffers noticed him lingering outside, and one Dominion executive spotted a rifle case and scope in his vehicle. A week later, the man returned, rambling about supposed problems with election security. He then said he had a pistol in his car. Alarmed, Dominion staff got the police involved and later obtained a restraining order. The episode, described in court filings and by a senior Dominion official who spoke to CNN on the condition of anonymity, is part of the continued fallout from 2020 election lies. The impact has been acutely felt at Dominion, the voting technology company that became the poster child for baseless right-wing voter fraud claims in 2020. The avalanche of disinformation forced voting companies and election officials to overhaul their approach for 2024, according to interviews with nearly a dozen people involved in running the election. They’ve ramped up investments in physical security, found new ways to combat false claims, and cracked down on employees’ political postings. Yet, more than one year after Fox News paid Dominion $787 million, the largest known defamation settlement in US media history, former President Donald Trump and his allies are still flooding right-wing media with the lie that voting machine companies rigged the 2020 election, and that the 2024 election might be stolen too. Even as they adapt for 2024, some people involved in administering elections still fear for their lives. There has been an exodus of election workers who have quit or retired instead of putting up with the abuse for another cycle. Just this week, the Justice Department announced charges against a Colorado man who threatened to kill election officials in two states for committing “treason.”