The Dangerous Life of a Georgia Election Official • Rhode Island Current

Editor’s note: This story contains profanity and racial slurs.

DOUGLASVILLE, Ga. — When Milton Kidd leaves work at the end of the day, he slips out the back door of the domed Douglas County Courthouse, avoiding the public entrance where people can taunt him or demand his home address.

He never takes the same route home two days in a row and makes random turns to avoid being followed.

Kidd, a black man, has a very dangerous job: he is director of elections and voter registration for Douglas County.

“Milton Kidd is a filthy idiot who lives on tax dollars like the scum he is,” one voter wrote in an email Kidd shared with Stateline. “Living off tax money, like a piece of low IQ n***** shit.”

Another resident of Kidd’s county of 149,000 west of Atlanta left him a voicemail.

“I don’t know if you know, Milton, but the American people have set a precedent for what they do against damned tyrants and oppressors who hold government positions,” the caller said. “Yes, in the 18th century they were called the British and the damn American people were so sick of them damn British being dicks just like you, and then they just fucking killed all the damn British.”

Kidd smiled in disbelief as he shared his security routine and the hate-filled messages that inspired it. He is baffled that he is the target of so much vitriol in organizing elections in 2024 – but he knows where it comes from.

The lies of former President Donald Trump, who is charged with state crimes for trying to pressure officials in Georgia to change the 2020 results, have resonated with many voters in Douglas County, Kidd said. Now this nonpartisan official, like many others across the country, is being forced to face their wrath.

“It’s an idea that has become insidious in the mindset of Americans that I can now behave this way because one individual didn’t win an election,” said Kidd, who has a thick beard and wears a thumb-sized crystal. a black string around his neck.

As he prepares for the next presidential election, Kidd said he will continue to pressure his state’s elected officials for more leadership and money to protect him, his staff and the democratic process.

“If this office fails, then our democracy has failed,” he said. “I will never allow myself to be distracted from the work I do by a detractor who calls using vile language.”

‘It’s like standing in a puddle of petrol’

Kidd is far from the only election official to have faced threats inspired by the lies of Trump and his allies, who continue to claim without evidence that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

Nationally, 38% of local election officials have faced threats, intimidation or abuse just for doing their jobs since 2020, according to a survey published in May by the nonprofit Brennan Center for Justice for voting rights based at New York University School of Law. . More than half of the more than 900 respondents indicate that they are concerned about the safety of colleagues and staff.

If this office fails, then our democracy has failed. I will never be distracted from the work I do by a detractor who calls using mean language.

– Milton Kidd, director of elections and voter registration for Douglas County, Georgia.

Kidd’s colleagues in neighboring counties have also felt the hostility.

In the green hills of Bartow County, a rural community in northwest Georgia, elections supervisor Joseph Kirk has taken steps to protect himself, though he won’t reveal details. Although harassment has not yet reached the levels it has in other provinces, he says he has lost staff members who have left their positions because of the changed atmosphere.

“There’s a lot more hostility now,” he said in his office in Cartersville, a red-brick building four miles from Main Street.

Tate Fall, Cobb County elections director, is also strengthening her elections office in suburban Atlanta. In the coming weeks, her office will apply unbreakable security film to the glass shielding the reception area. More access points will require key cards and additional panic buttons will be installed.

“It’s very surreal,” she said. “In the office, people have become so desensitized to people yelling at them that they don’t see much as a threat anymore.”

At least a dozen states have introduced new protections for local election officials in recent years, including increasing criminal penalties for those who threaten or harass them.

This month, officials in Georgia became the first in the nation to announce a requirement that all new police officers take an election security course, aimed in part at protecting election officials from threats.

This is part of a broader mission to build greater coordination between sheriff’s offices and election offices, said Chris Harvey, deputy executive director of the Georgia Police Officer Training and Standards Council, who will lead the effort.

Harvey, a former detective, also served as Georgia’s state elections director for six years, including during the 2020 presidential election.

After the US Senate runoff in January 2021, he was drugged: his home address and a photo of his house were posted online. He also received a death threat by email, which included a photo of him with a crosshair over his face.

Although he says he wasn’t worried about his safety, he was concerned about his wife and four children at home. He called the local police, who parked a car in front of his house for two weeks.

“In this supercharged environment, it’s like standing in a puddle of gasoline,” he told Stateline. “Anything can cause it. That wasn’t the case before.”

The democratic path

The fragile promise of democracy has always been part of Kidd’s life.

Kidd, 39, grew up in East St. Louis, Illinois, a former manufacturing center of 18,000 people along the Mississippi River.

His family was part of the Great Migration, moving north from southern states such as Arkansas and Mississippi in search of work and safety. But shortly after his ancestors’ arrival, white mobs murdered hundreds of black newcomers for several months in 1917, displacing 6,000 black people in the southern Illinois city.

His grandmother was a sharecropper in Luxor, Arkansas, and taught his mother the importance of voting. Growing up, he heard stories about civil rights activists Fannie Lou Hamer, who was beaten for registering voters, and Medgar Evers, who was murdered. It turned Kidd into a student of history who could recite the Declaration of Independence and parts of the Constitution.

“The importance of the ballot box has always been something that has been emphasized to me,” he said. “I know that in my own family, individuals have tried to register to vote and have had dogs set on them. These are not words in a book. It’s not that far away.”

Inspired by his father, who left school in the ninth grade to work, and his mother, who pursued a college education later in life, Kidd earned his master’s degree in public administration from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville in 2010.

He then did what he called a “reverse migration” back to the South to organize elections in several Atlanta-area counties, including Douglas County. He started there in 2015 and took charge of the office three years later.

In that time, Kidd has seen the election climate become nasty.

“We have turned this nation into an uglier, vile, more vicious spirit that we are only allowing to continue to manifest,” he said last month.

The election staff for Douglas County, Georgia, works behind closed doors in the basement of the domed courthouse in Douglasville, Georgia. (Matt Vasilogambros/Stateline)

He and his eight full-time staffers have tried to strengthen their public position by going to local churches, fairs and political party meetings of both parties to share details of how they run elections and securely canvass the vote.

But he needs more resources from the state. The same lawmakers who wink and nod to the lie that massive fraud is stealing an election do not support additional funding for local election boards, he said, especially for the security of election administrators.

All the security improvements he made to his office — including a series of magnetic locks on the doors — came through outside grants, a practice the state later banned in 2021.

A number of Kidd’s staff have resigned and he is finding it difficult to fill the temporary positions that ensure the election runs smoothly. Constant turnover can lead to mistakes, which leads to more distrust. The workers who stayed are still afraid.

“On election night, my husband is absolutely waiting for me to get home,” said Tesha Green, the county’s deputy elections director. “You always have to make sure that no one is there when we go out.”

Kidd was encouraged by Georgia’s announcement that all new police officers would be required to take an election security course. Does Kidd feel supported by his local sheriff’s office? He chuckled and said there was much more that could be done.

Cpt. Trent Wilson of the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office said the office took Kidd’s complaints seriously. Although they were concerned, he said, there was nothing criminal in the voicemails and emails Kidd received.

“It was very distasteful,” Wilson said. “But just because they’re unpalatable doesn’t mean they’re criminal.”

Pressed about what constitutes a threat, he added: “Look, I’m a black man. So we don’t like to be called a *****. But calling someone ***** is not a crime.”

As election season rolls around, he says the sheriff’s office will increase security by adding more deputies to the courthouse. Visitors already must pass through metal detectors, he noted.

As head of the elections office, Kidd knows he is a target, and he has accepted that. But he worries about his staff, many of whom are older women who don’t feel safe walking to their cars at night. And closer to home, he worries that if something happens to him, no one will be able to care for his beloved dogs, Kleo and Knight.

“In 2024, I will have a job that will require me to call myself a *****,” he said. “But I do it because I want to make sure people have access to the ballot box.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. If you have any questions, please contact editor Scott S. Greenberger: (email protected). Follow Stateline on Facebook and X.

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