Nancy Boren has overseen elections in Muscogee County, Georgia, for nearly three decades, but her job has changed dramatically in the last few years.
Just a couple weeks before her interview with Scripps News, Boren received an alarming text message. The message read in part, “The people resisting hand counting should envision January sixth happening at their houses. Once mobs and rioting breaks out they take on a life of their own.”
“It concerned me, but I didn't take it probably as seriously as I should,” Boren said of the message. “And I think that's a trait that many of us as elections officials have. We receive these, but we don't take them seriously because we can't believe that it would ever happen to us.”
In 2020, Georgia became a hotbed of conspiracy theories and disinformation about the election process and results. Election officials and poll workers across the state were targeted with harassment and even death threats. Now, security procedures have been updated.
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Boren gave Scripps News a tour of her facility, which features a panic button in the front office. A second button is located farther in the facility behind a door with a lock.
“We don't want them to remain in the front,” Boren explained. “If they have to mash the panic button, we want them to go to safety.”
Law enforcement is also an important part of the equation.
“The sheriff's office in Georgia is responsible for all government buildings and elections,” said Muscogee County Deputy Sheriff Thomas Medlin. “So our patrol units, they constantly rove from precinct to precinct all day, every 30- 45 minutes.”
When asked if he ever thought securing elections would be a part of his job, Medlin said, "No."
“I took it for granted,” he said. “This is an institution and it's always been and always will be.”
One of the more extreme emergency measures Boren’s office has taken is in case of fentanyl exposure through the mail.
“Each county has the Narcan. I never would have thought an election official would need Narcan,” Boren said while unzipping a little blue pouch with the counteractive medicine that was distributed to elections officials in every county in Georgia. “We don't worry specifically about it, but we are prepared if we do receive it.”
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She has also invested several thousand dollars in GPS trackers for the ballot bags and showed a live update on her computer of where each of the trackers was on a map of Muscogee County.
“We felt it was important to be able to track ballots since that is the official record of the vote from the polling place to the central tabulation,” Boren said. “And we purchased the tracker so that we could do that.”
To learn more about these drastic changes and how Georgia is working to keep election workers and voters safe, Scripps News traveled to Atlanta to talk with Gabe Sterling, the chief operating officer for the Georgia Secretary of State.
“Fulton County received a fentanyl-laden letter at the beginning of this year,” Sterling said, referring to the incident in November 2023 when election offices in multiple states received suspicious letters, some containing the deadly drug. “So, we have distributed Narcan to all 159 counties and then training for all of that.”
“We partnered with Department of Homeland Security and the Georgia Emergency Management Agency to inspect every single site that holds our election equipment,” Sterling said. “There was one office, Homeland came and they had a bunch of windows in front and they were instructed, you should park your cars along the front here. Why? It's the front of the windows, to block any bombs, basically. And that's the level we're having to deal with on this. “
When asked about how worried he was about mis- and disinformation about the election leading to physical threats, Sterling responded, “My biggest concern, I've been saying this for two years, isn't some militia getting together to march on something to try to overthrow an election. My biggest concern is a radicalization of people who are mentally unstable to begin with, who believe they're saving America from the right or the left.”
Sterling also spoke to the larger commentary about the increased security measures in the last four years- and what that means about democracy in the United States.
“Understand, we've been like this before. It's not the end of the world. Is it terrible? Yes. The things we don't have, never had to think about for a while. Yes, we will get through it. Georgia is resilient. The voters are resilient. The United States is resilient. And I have faith and optimism we'll get through this.”
With early voting underway, Muscogee County voters who spoke with Scripps News said they feel safe casting their ballot.
“We have very brave, very committed poll workers,” Boren said. “We have a great group of people, and they’re not really worried right now.”
