Nov. 4, 2016
Heather Hurlburt wrote for Democracy Journal about predicting and preventing violence during and after the election.
A steady drip of claims that next Tuesday’s election is at risk of rigging, and explicit calls by some far-right actors to their supporters to show up at polling places, have raised the specter of violence on Election Day or thereafter. “Go around and watch other polling places,” Donald Trump has said repeatedly. Neo-Nazi and other extremist groups have been blunt: The Daily Stormer, which bills itself as “the most visited alt-right website,” advised its readers that “if we don’t win this, it’s going to be open race war” alongside illustrations of Hitler and guns. And researcher Jonathon Morgan found an exponential spike in activity on some 246 Facebook pages maintained by U.S. militia groups, with explicit posts about the possibility of post-election violence.