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It's an exhausting time to be Seth Bluestein.
We're going to be working around the clock twenty four to seven. We are taking extraordinary measures.
Bluestein is a Philadelphia's City commissioner and he's in charge of election operations there. Back in twenty twenty, as deputy commissioner, he was in charge of overseeing the city's vote counting, and it was really hard on him.
I started receiving threats to my personal cell phone and to my social media accounts. We had to send LASA officer to have a presence outside of my house to protect my wife and kids.
Bluestein says that he's hoping this year will be different, but former President Donald Trump has already taken aim at the election process in his state. Just a few days ago, Trump posted on truth social we caught them cheating big in Pennsylvania. He was talking about claims of voter fraud registration forms and mail in ballots, which election officials say
are unfounded. There's also a video of people tearing up Pennsylvania ballots that's been circulating, which US intelligence agencies say they've determined is disinformation made and amplified by Russian actors. Russia has denied these allegations. Ensuring the election runs smoothly and that people believe that it's running smoothly is up to people like Bluestein and thousands of other city officials and election workers, mostly volunteers in counties like Hiss across
the country. New and sometimes extreme measures are being taken, all to protect election workers and combat miss and disinformation in the lead up to America finding out who won. This is the big take. I'm Salaiah Mosen. It's Tuesday, November fifth, twenty twenty four, election day, and today we're taking you to the people on the front lines of how votes are cast and counted at polling centers, drop boxes,
and election offices across the nation's ten thousand jurisdictions. We'll examine the threats they're facing and the measures being taken both to protect them and to protect the integrity of the election. To hear more about the new steps being taken this election, I spoke with Chris Stroum. He covers national security for Bloomberg. He and our colleagues have spoken with election officials around the country. Chris what are things looking like on the ground.
There's a lot of concern right now. We've been talking with election officials in swing states and non swing states just across the board. They're putting in place all these security measures, and some of them are really extreme. It can seem scary. Voting locations now a lot of them have bulletproof glass. Some election sites are putting up fencing and barriers. Some election sites are putting up barbed wire. In Phoenix, they're going to have snipers on the roof.
Chris says these measures are driven by what happened four years ago.
Some of the sites where we saw the most violence in twenty twenty are now locked down, the most Maricopa County, in Phoenix, Philadelphia, Detroit.
Back in twenty twenty, protests erupted around the election centers in Philadelphia and Phoenix as votes were being counted. In Detroit, Trump supporters clamored behind the glass doors at the center where the state's officials were tallying ballots, demanding they stop the count. This year, the city's count is happening in a secured area blocked off by police, a metal detector and steel doors, and officials nationwide are preparing for a
number of threats. According to a survey from the Brennan Center for Justice, some seventy percent of election workers feel the danger is worse this year than in twenty twenty.
Obviously, the biggest concern is that there's going to be groups that will descend on polling places, whether they're white supremacist groups, or whether they're militias, or whether they're just angry citizens that don't believe that the elections are secure, and that these people are going to come to the polling locations and cause violence and potentially hurt people.
Poll workers are receiving de escalation training to try and prevent the sort of violence, and they're also being given police radios or portable panic buttons in case things do turn violent. But not all these concerns are things election officials can prepare for. One additional worry on their minds is that if there's any issue with the technology that powers voting, people may read malicious intent into it, even if it isn't there.
The concern is that overlaid on top of that is all the rhetoric and disinformation about how the election might be stolen. Right now, the US government is in like a hand to hand combat battle with foreign adversaries like
Russia and Iran. When it comes to disinformation being spread about the elections, you have disinformation on social media, and you have major political figures like Donald Trump talking about the fact that the elections have been rigged and will be rigged, and so that is a concern that you could have some systems that go down for certain different reasons, and then people read nefarious purposes into those that could then escalate into physical confrontations and violence at voting locations
because people feel that their votes are being tampered with.
And systems can go down for so many reasons, not all nefarious weather, for example. But it's much harder to address the threat of mis and disinformation than it is to bring in a power generator or even put up bulletproof glass after the break. A greater push for transparency, how election officials are hoping to combat concerns about interference by giving voters an inside look at what's happening behind the scenes. For the people on the frontlines of the
voting process, Preparation for today started months ago. Marion Moskowitz is one of them. She is vice chair of the Board of commissioners in Chester County, Pennsylvania, a community of half a million in the suburbs of outer Philadelphia, and she says this year's election is going to look worlds different from how she remembers the elections of her youth.
And when I grew up in Philadelphia, my parents actually had the voting booth in our garage. Isn't that hard to believe?
She says The date was actually pretty pleasant back then.
People from the neighborhood would come, it would be a big party, they'd argue about politics, and it was a fun community time. And today I look at it and it's just so filled with anxiety and anger and mistrust. Something went wrong somewhere.
Moskowitz was the chair of the county election board back in twenty twenty. That's when it took four days for the state of Pennsylvania to be called for Joe Biden, and she says that the lead up to that call was tough on poll workers.
I have never seen people so stressed in my entire life. People were yelling at them, telling them not to trust the elections, and that they were doing things behind the scenes to affect the outcome.
This year, Chester County is trying something new to get ahead of all the misinformation that led to these claims of election fraud.
Our whole election department is live streamed. You can go on now and watch everything, including the counting. See everybody processing them, see the machines, watch everybody in the room.
The hope is that more transparency, giving voters a look inside the vote counting process will help clear up some concerns around the integrity of the race this time around. But it's especially tough in a state like Pennsylvania, where the law says that poll workers aren't allowed to start counting mail in ballots until seven am on election day.
Everybody in Pennsylvania should realize that we are not going to have results today.
It's this window of time between when polls close and the race can be called that's weighing heavily on the mind of Philadelphia Commissioner Seth Bluestein, who we heard from at the top of the show.
That window of time is the biggest threat for miss and disinformation, which can lead to harassment threats, And it's really that window that I'm most concerned about.
Bluestein says that the city is taking measures to try and shorten that window. They've invested in high speed scanners and updated envelope extraction machines, and they've hired additional workers to speed up vote counting. The city's election budget has tripled to nearly forty million dollars since twenty nineteen. But there's only so much they can do when they aren't allowed to start counting the hundreds of thousands of absentee
ballots in advance. So he says he'll be trying to update the public on social media and through the press to assure people that delayed results aren't a reason to doubt their integrity.
Transparency is a really important piece of this puzzle, important for us to as establish a pattern of facts that are accurate that we can point back to after the election to show what the actual truth is.
But election officials are walking a fine line. They want people to feel safe voting and feel safe that their vote will be counted accurately, and yet they don't want all the extra precautions to intimidate people from coming out to vote. Here's Bloomberg's Christrom again.
Election officials are trying to strike a balance and saying we're doing everything we can on the security front, but we also don't want to scare people. We don't want to scare voters away. It's safe to vote. We have a lot of safeguards in place to help ensure that our elections are free.
And fair, and they're being tested right now.
They're all being tested. Yeah, and what we don't know is how this year is going to play out when we get on the other side of election Day.
Thanks for listening to The Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm Salaiah Mosen. This episode was produced by Julia Press. It was edited by Caitlin Kenny and Aaron Edwards. It was mixed by Alex Sugia and fact checked by Adriana Tapia. A special thanks to Mark Niquette. Naomi Shaven, who also edited this episode, is our senior producer. Wendy Benjaminson and Elizabeth Ponso provide editorial direction. Nicole Beemsterbower is our executive producer.
Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's head of Podcasts. Please follow and review The Big Take wherever you listen to podcasts. It helps new listeners find the show.