WASHINGTON - Officials across the United States already charged with securing the upcoming presidential election are taking additional precautions, bracing for the possibility that Nov. 3 and the days that follow could be marred not just by potential cyberattacks but by violence.
The boldest and, perhaps, starkest warnings are not coming from federal authorities but from state officials, some of whom say foreign disinformation campaigns could fuel a range of problems, from minor disturbances to something much more severe.
“Election result delays and recounts could result in protests and attempts to occupy election offices,” officials with the New Jersey Department of Homeland Security and Preparedness warned in a threat assessment issued in late September.
“Incidents of civil unrest resulting in riots, violent acts, and fatalities will converge with election uncertainty, producing confrontations between protesters and counter-demonstrators challenging election outcomes,” it noted.
Other state and local election officials are not taking such warnings lightly, especially after the FBI this month disrupted a to kidnap Democratic Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
Michigan officials say they are reviewing the situation with an eye toward the election and plan to issue additional guidance in the coming days.
But the kidnapping plot, which according to the FBI also looked at Democratic Virginia Governor Ralph Northam as a potential target, is not the only incident that has caused alarm among state election officials.
Some have also pointed to a protest in late September outside an early voting center in Fairfax County, Virginia – a suburb of Washington – that quickly went viral.
Trump Supporters came over to the early voting site to protest while people are in line to Vote in FairFax Virginia.
Video of the protest, posted to social media, shows a group of supporters of President Donald Trump approaching the polling location with signs and flags, chanting, “Four more years!”
Police reports on the incident indicate entrances to the polling site, a county government building, were never blocked, and officials later said there were no indication any laws were broken. But some voters .
Still, election officials across the country worry the next time might not play out as peacefully.
“That's something that's definitely of concern to us,” Michael Moore, the information security officer for Maricopa County, Arizona, said during an online forum on Sept. 23, just days after the incident.
Moore’s advice to other election officials -- be prepared.
“Make sure that you're reaching out to your law enforcement and say, on and around Election Day, what is our plan?” he said. “Do you have an emergency contact list? Do you have your police department, your sheriff, whoever, on speed dial ready to get them to respond to any kind of threat?”
Police in Fairfax County declined to comment on any specific measures they have taken in response to the protest, though a spokesman told VOA the department is “in daily, real-time communication with our partners at the Board of Elections, the federal government and Metropolitan Police Department in Washington on any potential events or threats.”
For its part, the Metropolitan Police Department is planning for increased patrols in areas around polling places on Election Day itself.
“MPD’s policy is to ensure that all citizens in the District of Columbia [Washington] are afforded the opportunity to vote on any given election day,” said MPD spokesperson Kristen Metzger, pointing to a .
Only, just planning for security on Election Day itself might not be enough.
The updated threat assessment issued by New Jersey officials warns that the longer it takes for the Nov. 3 election to be decided, the greater the chances for something to go wrong.
In one possible scenario, which envisions the country having to wait months for certified election results, the assessment advises: “Several states [could] become a destination for various groups to converge and conduct violent protests,” resulting in “deadly confrontations and civil unrest occurring among protesters, requiring state and federal law enforcement to intervene.”
Still, organizations representing state officials say, as scary as such a scenario sounds, their members are determined not to be caught unprepared.
“At the state and local level, countless election scenarios are planned for,” a spokesperson for the National Association of Secretaries of State told VOA, adding they have been helped by a series of so-called “table-top exercises.”