LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Voting has begun in the 2024 general election.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
States are starting to send out absentee ballots, and early in-person voting starts today in Virginia and Minnesota. This is the first presidential election since Donald Trump's efforts in 2020 to overturn his defeat. Part of that effort included demonizing election administrators and other acts. And now election officials are supposed to do their jobs in a presidential race again.
FADEL: NPR's Miles Parks covers voting, and he joins us now from the swing state of Michigan. Hey, Miles.
MILES PARKS, BYLINE: Hey, Leila.
FADEL: So you were at a media briefing with swing-state voting officials. How are they feeling?
PARKS: Yeah. So the energy yesterday was really interesting. You know, I'm from Florida originally, and I could not help thinking that this meeting reminded me a lot of the feeling a day or two before a hurricane was set to make landfall when I was a kid. You know, these officials, they've spent the last four years preparing, trying to improve their systems, educate voters, try to persuade the many skeptical people in their communities about their processes.
But in some ways, the next couple of weeks, as voting starts, are a little bit out of their control. They don't know exactly what's going to happen. And there's this nervous energy and a sense that some unknown variable could happen at kind of any time. Here's the executive director of North Carolina's Board of Elections, Karen Brinson Bell.
KAREN BRINSON BELL: Hopefully, we're returning to a world of civility where we understand that, you know, there are winners and losers in every contest, be it a sporting event or an electoral contest, and that has to be accepted.
PARKS: You know, you can hear in her voice that is not really a sure thing right now. But I also heard from a lot of election officials that they feel battle-tested at this point, that they feel prepared for the sort of conspiracy theories and schemes that they're expecting to see over the next couple of weeks.
FADEL: Did you get a sense from voting officials which of these schemes, conspiracy theories they may be expecting in November?
PARKS: Yes. It is clear that the No. 1 narrative for the election-denial wing of the Republican Party around this time is going to be noncitizens voting in American elections. Studies and audits have repeatedly confirmed that this is not a thing. It isn't happening at anything but microscopic numbers. But the far right has really centered their messaging on this idea online, and Trump, former President Trump, is already talking about it. Officials say it is almost certainly going to be a key narrative if Trump loses the election.
But to voting officials, it doesn't make much sense. You know, there are processes in place that make it really difficult for noncitizens to vote. But they also don't think it's logical that a person would go through all the trouble of getting to the United States only to put themselves on a government list, a public record, and put themselves at risk of deportation or arrest. One clerk in Georgia yesterday told me the only time he's ever found noncitizens on his voting rolls are because they've come into his office crying, begging to be taken off when they were added by mistake.
FADEL: Now, Miles, election officials, I mean, it's kind of a dangerous job these days. It's an increased threat environment. More than a dozen state election officials said they were sent suspicious packages this week. How are they feeling about their safety?
PARKS: Yeah. Four of the six states represented at this meeting yesterday said their office was sent one of these packages. They didn't end up being dangerous so far. They ended up containing white powder that, in some cases, was found to be flour. But physical safety is a big theme and also the mental toll that this environment is taking on these people. You know, workers are going to be more likely to make mistakes if they're looking over their shoulder constantly.
And then those sort of human mistakes are what further this cycle of misinformation. Gabriel Sterling, who's another election official in Georgia, made a plea to the audience during the town hall portion of this meeting yesterday to just remember that these are all humans in your neighborhood who are running this elections process.
FADEL: NPR's Miles Parks. Thank you, Miles.
PARKS: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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