Headline Roundup • November 3rd, 2022
Should Voters Worry About Intimidation at the Polls?
2022 Elections,Voter Intimidation,Voter Suppression,Midterm Elections,Joe Biden,Democratic Party,Republican Party,Election Integrity,Voting,Polarization,Elections
Summary from the AllSides News Team
With the 2022 midterm elections underway, outlets and politicians on the left are issuing warnings of voter suppression and intimidation. Specific concerns are being raised, and referred to authorities, over potential intimidation occurring in Maricopa County, Arizona, where reports state armed men have been seen loitering around ballot drop boxes and photographing voters.
Key Quotes: In a speech on Wednesday, President Joe Biden called for voters to "stand up and speak against" voter intimidation. Columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. connected voter intimidation efforts to racial tensions, citing Maricopa County's majority non-white population to state that a "large fragment of white America feels itself outnumbered in the country's changing demographic climate." Political Science Professor Kristin Kanthak cited a Reuters (Center Bias) poll finding 40% of respondents were concerned about voting intimidation to state, "concerns about voter intimidation are greater in 2022, largely because of reactions to baseless claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election."
Outlets on the right have mostly been silent on the issue of voter intimidation, largely attributing warnings to be a campaign tactic from Democrats. The New York Post Editorial Board dismissed warnings, writing that "someone, somewhere, might've threatened some voter," but insisted the President's claims had "absolutely no evidence to back it up," not mentioning the reports from Maricopa County.
For Context: Midterm election day is this upcoming Tuesday, November 8. Early voting and mail-in ballot drop-offs are already taking place.
Featured Coverage of this Story
Maricopa County Elections Department/TNS/TNS
Let us apologize in advance to Barack Obama, who once wrote a book called "The Audacity of Hope." You see, our subject today is what might be called the Caucacity of Nope.
The word is a new coinage, a portmanteau of "Caucasian" and "audacity" denoting a brand of white arrogance and entitlement that has become tiresomely familiar in recent years. It often plays out in episodes — sometimes fatal — wherein some white person takes it upon themselves to police people of color who are just trying to live their...
Ross D. Franklin/Associated Press
In Arizona, after armed activists began monitoring ballot drop boxes, two Republican officials in Maricopa County issued an unusual joint statement to poll watchers: “Don’t dress in body armor to intimidate voters as they are legally returning their ballots.”
In Pennsylvania, the Democrat who oversees the state’s elections has embarked on a public speaking tour to explain why delays and other unevenness in reporting election results is normal—and not an indicator of fraud.
In Georgia, the GOP secretary of state who rebuffed former President Donald Trump’s efforts to change the...
NY Post composite / istock/ Getty Images
Diary of disturbing disinformation and dangerous delusions
This claim:
“Crime is not on the rise. It’s actually going down.”
— Joy Behar, Tuesday
We say: With elections near, the left’s desperate to get voters to ignore crime they see with their own eyes. “The View’s” Joy Behar says she “looked it up” and found murders in major cities down 4%. Which proves nothing: As a report from the Major Cities Chiefs Association found, robberies through June 30 this year rose 13%, aggravated assaults 2.6%. And murders were up 50% vs....
