Chris Harvey, deputy director of the Georgia Peace Officer Standards and Training Council, talks about efforts to train law enforcement to address violence against election officials from his office in Austell, Ga., on Tuesday, June 25, 2024. Harvey oversaw elections for the state of Georgia for six years. (Photo by Peggy Dodd/News21)
Photos by Denzen Cortez, Peggy Dodd, Shelby Rickert and Olivia Talkington
Video by Gabi Morando, Denzen Cortez and Marshal Farmer
Editor’s Note: This story contains graphic language from threatening voicemails and emails sent to election officials across the U.S.
ROCHESTER HILLS, Mich. – Exactly seven days had passed since the 2020 presidential election when Tina Barton sat down at her desk and saw the blinking light on her office phone.
It had already been a week from hell for the city clerk of Rochester Hills. Her office was responsible for administering an election that had grown increasingly contested, especially in her home state of Michigan. At one point, she’d worked for 36 hours straight.
She picked up the phone and hit the flashing button. A voice rang out that she would never forget.
“We will f***ing take you out,” a man said on her voicemail. “F**k your family, f**k your life, and you deserve the f***ing throat to the knife. … Watch your f***ing back.”
She listened again. She’d heard correctly. The man parroted then-President Donald Trump’s false claims that the election had been stolen, savaging Barton, a Republican, for her role in the “fraudulent” outcome.
Barton saved the message, called in a co-worker and filed a police report.
She immediately feared for herself, her husband and her children. Did the man know where she lived? Barton called friends in the military and asked them to identify vulnerabilities at her home. She asked neighbors to be on the lookout for anything suspicious, and she began screening phone calls.
Rissi is the son of an Air Force pilot who died in Vietnam. His mental health diminished after a series of personal losses, his lawyer said in court records. Rissi’s brother died in 2017, his wife died of complications from Alzheimer’s disease in 2018, and his mother passed away the same month he made his threatening phone calls.
While in a “weakened emotional state, Mr. Rissi was inundated with misinformation and exaggerations” regarding the Arizona election, his lawyer wrote. “Mr. Rissi is remorseful for his actions. … Had he been in his right state of mind, he would have never engaged in the conduct.”
News21 sent letters to Russell and Rissi requesting interviews. Russell declined an interview through his warden. Rissi did not respond.
Despite the prosecutions, some question whether the government is doing enough to safeguard officials and the electoral process.
In July, U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., launched an inquiry to ensure federal officials investigate threats “expeditiously.” He’s asked the DOJ and FBI how many agents are dedicated to these cases and to explain what determines whether a case goes forward.
John Keller, who heads the DOJ task force, said in an interview with News21 that the group has reviewed hundreds of cases, but most don’t warrant a criminal charge because they include speech considered protected by the First Amendment.
“It’s things like: ‘You should be thrown in jail. You should be thrown out of office. You’re a traitor,’” Keller says. “That kind of hostility is not something that we’re able to prosecute.”
In those cases, he says, other agencies are stepping in to conduct security assessments to better prepare local officials should they or their infrastructure be targeted.
Congressional Democrats, including Ossoff, have introduced bills to provide states with resources related to election safety and to create federal penalties for intimidating or threatening an election official or voter. None has succeeded.
In some states, legislators are taking action.
In 2022, Maine mandated de-escalation and threat reporting training for election officials. The secretary of state must send an annual report of all investigated claims to the Legislature.
In Michigan, intimidating election officials became a misdemeanor in 2023. In Arizona, a 2023 law says election officials and poll workers may request their home addresses be excluded from public records.
“We need to send a message to people that these are crimes,” says Maricopa County Supervisor Gates, who declined to seek re-election this year. In January, Ryan Hadland of Phoenix was sentenced to three years’ probation for the threatening email Gates received.
“This is not a sustainable environment that we’re in right now,” Gates says.
Relief, at last
Tina Barton, a former elections official who now serves as vice chair of the Committee for Safe and Secure Elections, reads her victim impact statement outside the federal courthouse in Detroit on Tuesday, July 9, 2024. Just after the 2020 election, an Indiana man left Barton a voicemail threatening to “take you out.” He was sentenced to 14 months in prison. (Photo by Olivia Talkington/News21)
Just after the Fourth of July, Tina Barton stood at a courtroom podium with the man who had threatened her life seated at a table just to her left. Accompanied by her mother and husband, Barton had come to confront Andrew Nickels at his sentencing.
It had been more than 1,300 days since she first played his voicemail. Barton knew, because she had counted.
“That’s over 1,300 days of trauma,” she told the courtroom, noting that most of that time, she didn’t know what her tormentor even looked like. “He could have been any stranger passing me in a store, on a sidewalk, in a church or walking down my street.
“A shadow, a noise, someone standing too close to me now brings a wave of anxiety, a constant reminder of the trauma that lingers within me.”
Nickels, 38, of Carmel, Indiana, pleaded guilty in February. Court records show he had no prior criminal history and, in 2008, had been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, a condition marked by symptoms that can include hallucinations, delusions, depression and mania.
Defense attorney Steven Scharg blamed the crime on Nickels’ mental health and said his client had stopped taking his medication. He argued no prison time was warranted and that Nickels was “well on his way to being rehabilitated.”
At the sentencing, Nickels spoke only briefly, telling the judge about his mental health diagnoses and apologizing for his threats.
“I am a kind person,” he said. “I have brighter days ahead of me.”
Barton, however, called Nickels’ voicemail an “invisible scar” and told the judge she had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. She also asked the court to consider the effect such actions have on democracy, noting election officials across the country were watching the case.
She requested a sentence of at least 1,300 days in prison – the same amount of time she’d suffered. The judge ultimately sentenced Nickels to a fraction of that: 14 months in prison, followed by two years of supervised release.
Nickels left the courtroom with his parents, escorted by Scharg, who declined further comment.
Nickels and Barton never exchanged words, but Barton had one last message for him as she delivered her victim impact statement.
“Andrew,” she said, turning to face him head-on, “you haven’t gotten the best of me.”
Tina Barton, vice chair of the Committee for Safe and Secure Elections, leaves the federal courthouse in Detroit on Tuesday, July 9, 2024, with her mother and husband. Barton attended the sentencing hearing for Andrew Nickels, an Indiana man who after the 2020 election left a voicemail threatening her life. (Photo by Olivia Talkington/News21)
News21 reporters Denzen Cortez, Marshal Farmer and Gabi Morando contributed to this story.
This report is part of “Fractured,” an examination of the state of American democracy produced by Carnegie-Knight News21. For more stories, visit https://fractured.news21.com.