Gitlin-Adam

These actions not only put would-be intimidators on notice, especially those who would
be coordinating their actions and perhaps likelier to be on the lookout for state guidance, but also
increased common understanding of what sorts of behavior was outside acceptable bounds.
Reported Intimidation
The 2016 election saw more reported events, often with a discriminatory component, than
the 2012 election. By one estimate there was as much as a fivefold increase in the number of
incidents reported, in three times as many states (Gitlin 2017). The nonpartisan Election
Protection hotline, the largest operation of its kind, received over 4,000 calls on Election Day
complaining of voter intimidation and vote suppression in the first few hours of voting, more
than half of them from Pennsylvania (Neuhauser 2016). The author of this paper supervised the
Election Protection call center receiving calls from Pennsylvania, and can attest to having
reviewed numerous complaints of private citizens and election officials alike making voters
uncomfortable through words or deeds.
While there were fewer instances of reported intimidation than many news outlets
predicted, the increase may have reflected the rhetoric of the campaign—with greater suspicion
of others, and greater acceptance of violence, by individual voters. Among other troubling
events:
• A black church in Mississippi was found burned, with the phrase “Vote Trump”
painted on its side (Green 2016b).
• In one Tennessee county, African American voters faced long lines and claimed
to feel harassed by questions regarding their voter ID and residency—questions
that, according to reports, were not posed to white voters. (Sher 2016).
• Similarly, in Michigan, two women wearing hijabs were pulled out of line and
questioned by someone who was not a poll worker. (Damron 2016).
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