Leon County’s elections supervisor is worried about poll workers and elections staff becoming the target of threats and coercion as controversy around election security builds. Mark Earley told the Leon legislative delegation he believes changes may be needed.
Earley says he's received troubling public records requests for the personal information of staff and volunteers. He worries that information could open the door to threats, harassment and coercion aimed at elections workers.
“…because they are invested with a lot of passwords and things like that about our voting systems and our voter registration systems,” he said. “But this is something we’ve seen coming. We’ve asked for these protections in the past, but it’s here right now and it’s a big concern of ours. So, we would like very much to have explicit protections for those – especially our poll workers.”
Now the state’s elections supervisors are asking the Legislature to exempt election worker information from public records requests.
“Two weeks ago, we received a very worrisome public records request for the names and positions and parties of all of our poll workers,” Earley said. “If that is placed on the internet, we’re very concerned. We’ve been successful at pushing back against that, but I think the protections there are tenuous at best.”
Elections supervisors also are asking lawmakers to exempt all voter information from public records requests. Under that proposal, the information would be made available only to the voter, a canvassing board, an election official, a political party or a qualified candidate facing opposition.
