Neighbors were counting on Cindy Elgan to run for two decades elections In our little corner of Nevada. Now those same neighbors think he’s part of a conspiracy to take away Donald Trump’s presidency.

Never mind that Republicans won 82 percent of the votes cast in Esmeralda County in 2020; There are approximately 700 people in this district, making this area one of the least populated areas. United States.

“I do not trust the results of the 2020 election,” said Mary Jane Zakas, a retired teacher who supports the effort to recall Elgan as county clerk.

Echoing an oft-repeated theory among conservatives, Zakas said the problem was the use of voting machines instead of paper ballots.

“As Mike Lindell points out, there are a lot of ways to cheat,” he said, referring to the man whose outbursts about the integrity of elections often appear alongside ads for pillows he sells.

“There are mathematical formulas that can change your vote. There are things that can turn this around,” Zakas said.

Elgan knows nearly all of the 600 registered voters in Esmeralda, a desert where gold miners, including author Mark Twain, once sought their fortune.

He said in the past the community always seemed happy with the way elections were conducted.

But things took a turn for the worse when Trump refused to concede his loss to Joe Biden in 2020.

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“Some people are very passionate about this and I can’t blame them because they are passionate about their country,” he told AFP in his office in Goldfield.

“I may not agree with some of the things they do or say or don’t say, but I understand.”

‘It harms the elections’

Polls show more than a third of Americans have doubts about the integrity of the election system.

Claire Woodall, of the Issue One research institute, said there had been a current of mistrust for a long time.

But Trump’s refusal to concede in 2020 has calcified things.

“We’re really starting to see questioning, particularly regarding election administration,” he said.

Aside from the uproar it creates at the national level, he said, the situation can play out insidiously in smaller communities like Goldfield, where threats, harassment and attacks have forced many election officials out of their positions.

The shift among local election officials has been especially fierce in states where presidential elections are often close, such as Arizona, where Biden won by 0.3 percentage points in 2020, and Nevada, where the margin was 2.4 percentage points, according to a report by Issue. One.

Amy Burgans, who runs elections in Douglas County, home to 50,000 people in western Nevada, gave an example.

“I have only been in this position for four years, but I am still one of the most senior clerks in the state,” he said.

Burgans, a Republican, is disturbed that much of the misinformation about election integrity comes from his own party.

He said lies and conspiracies were pushing out honest officials.

“We are losing the institutional knowledge of the clerks who have been doing this job for years.

“It doesn’t help make the election more secure. “This hurts the elections,” he said.

Threats against election officials

AFP contacted several former Nevada election officials who declined to speak on the record.

“I don’t want to expose my family again,” one of them said.

A quarter of election officials reported being subjected to harassment or threats between 2020 and 2022, according to a survey by the nonpartisan Election and Voting Information Center.

Burgans was one of them. He received death threats in 2022.

Tammy Patrick of the National Association of Election Officials said rising tensions have led to once-unheard-of security measures such as bulletproof vests, security cameras and even placing snipers atop buildings near polling stations.

In Los Angeles, election offices partnered with law enforcement to have search dogs inspect mail-in ballots.

“They received mail containing various items… from different parts of the country. Some of it was fentanyl… one was methamphetamine,” Patrick said.

Burgans said he and his team now carry Narcan, an antidote to opioid poisoning, in case they receive a contaminated ballot.

Much of his working life is now spent explaining the voting process to the public and reassuring them that the process is safe and secure.

“For the most part, I think people are willing to talk,” he said.

But some cannot be convinced.

“No matter how hard I try to tell them the facts, they still want to believe the misinformation they are given,” Burgans said.