Not All Heroes Wear Capes

Not all heroes wear capes. They aren’t all soldiers, first responders, or health workers in the time of Covid. Some are just doing their job. My friend, Kelly, is one such hero. She works for the Maricopa County Elections Department in Phoenix, Arizona and has received death threats, just for doing her job.

On November 18th of this year, I noticed a blog I wrote in August of 2017 was getting a lot of online clicks/views. The blog is titled “This is not my America” and was my response to the horrific KKK/Nazi torch lit parade in Charlottesville, Va that year. I assumed someone liked the blog and linked to it in their own blog, or perhaps tweeted the link out. The next day, there were even more views (almost 150 in total). I decided to investigate further and traced the clicks to a specific blog site, as opposed to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or web searches, which is how most readers find me.

It turned out a right wing blogger was calling me a leftist in her blog and said I was “attacking the Founding Fathers”. The blogger went on to use my Charlottesville blog to condemn my friend, Kelly, as also being a “leftist”. (a link to my Charlottesville blog is at the end of this piece, if you want to see what a leftist I am).

The right winger stated “no Republican/Conservative would have retweeted the blog, but Kelly did, outing herself as a leftist/Democrat”. Later, in the same blog, she commented about my friend Kelly – “If this is true, then we’ve flushed out yet another traitor in our midst. Just one little Benedict Arnold of many. ”

Why was my friend under attack from this blogger and others? Upon further reading of the attacker’s blog, I found out Kelly now works for the Maricopa County Elections Department. In the course of her job, and at the direction of her boss, Kelly sent an email out to election workers shortly before the election, telling them voters should use the provided Sharpie pens on Election Day to mark their ballots. Evidently Kelly was an evil person and part of a cabal doing everything she could to cancel out the votes of Republicans on Election Day. Someone leaked the email to the trolls, with her full name, email address, and phone numbers.

According to conspiracy theorists, voting machines couldn’t read ballots marked with sharpies, and thus hundreds of thousands of votes for Trump on Election Day weren’t counted in Maricopa County and elsewhere. Now this was demonstrably false and was debunked multiple times. In fact, Sharpies worked better than pens, and would cause fewer issues on Election Day than ball point pens. This didn’t stop the trolls from posting about the Sharpies, or my friend. If you want to see some bizarre stuff, do a search on Sharpiegate.

I decided to contact my evil friend, and see how she was doing, but I ran into a problem or two. Her work phone went straight to voice mail. Her cell phone went straight to voice mail. Her LinkedIn account was shut down, as were her twitter and Facebook accounts. I also couldn’t reach her via Messages, or Messenger.

I was starting to worry.

I contacted a mutual friend to see if he had any other way to reach Kelly. He passed on a cell number he knew worked for her previously. I reached out…. and we connected.

While Kelly was OK, she was having some issues in Arizona. Trolls were coming after her and bombarding her accounts with threats and vulgar comments, so she shut them down. People called her names in person and online that you wouldn’t want your mother to hear. She was receiving death threats and her voicemail for work and her cellphone were porting directly to the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office forensic team. The death threats were credible enough that the sheriff’s department discussed assigning protection to her.

Kelly and I talked about the election and what was going on in Arizona. She was in surprisingly good spirits for someone threatened with death. In her words –

“I’m OK. The County offered me a security detail because I’m getting death threats. I have all new phone numbers. There were lots of sick, disgusting messages I wish I’d never heard. These people are ugly. They’re pulling at every straw. I took everything down out of fear for my family, but they have taken that as an admission of guilt.”

The only thing Kelly was guilty of, was doing her job.

Kelly shared with me that her parents, and her wife Sarah served as her base and her foundation. They were keeping her sane with jokes, and with messages of love. Her boss and Maricopa County were also standing by her – with protection, words of support and defense of the truth.

I said to her “I’m proud of you. Now is the time for good people to stand their ground, and doing the right thing is important. You, my friend, did, and are doing, the right thing.”

She answered back “I hold that in my heart – I have nothing without my integrity.”

***

The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office completed an extensive review of all actions surrounding the election. In an interesting twist, one of those attorneys was Tom Liddy, the son of G. Gordon Liddy of Watergate fame. The Attorney’s Office found no issues with the conduct of the election, and in fact stated the Election Board did everything they should, to ensure a fair election. Mr. Liddy’s comment was “This is the best election I have ever seen… in terms of turnout, and security”.

On Friday, November 20th, the court threw out the third lawsuit raised since Election Day in Arizona. Later the same evening, the five member Maricopa County Board of Supervisors met to canvass and certify the 2020 general election results. There are four Republicans and one Democrat on the Board. In a two and a half hour meeting, they discussed the election, and listened to input from the Election Board, and the County Attorney’s Office.

Scott Jarrett, the Director of Election Day and Emergency Voting, said this in his closing statement “The heroes of this election are the election staff…. the people who still came to work, even as people were chanting at them, and calling them names…..”

Just after 6PM, the board unanimously approved the canvass of the November election for Maricopa County.

The Chairman of the Board, Clint Hickman, said “We’ve canvassed the General Election results and can assure Maricopa County voters proper steps were taken to ensure a full and accurate count of all votes. No matter how you voted, this election was administered with integrity, transparency and in accordance with state laws.”

He went on to say “I learned a lot about the character of people in this community… I will not violate the law or deviate from my own moral compass, even though that is what some have pressured me to do… I specifically want to thank the staff who have worked tirelessly to run this election during a pandemic – Scott, Kelly, Rey…. I want to personally thank you”.

Not all heroes wear capes. One works on the presidential election in Maricopa County, Arizona. I’m proud of my friend Kelly, who continues to provide election support, even as I write this blog.

Addendum :

• You can read my blog “This is not my America” at this link, and judge for yourself how much of a “leftist” I am: https://mnhallblog.wordpress.com/2017/08/14/this-is-not-my-america/

• I chose to only provide a couple of screen shots of the right wing blog that linked to my site. I did not want to give the blogger any more exposure by providing a link to her site and the information she is publishing. As you may have seen in the screen shot above, there was a strange mix of comments about Kelly, the blogger possibly being sued by her own parents for defamation, and a little Lord of the Rings thrown in as well (although she misspells Eomer). It’s a strange world we live in these days.

• As I was writing this blog, the trolls continue to post about Kelly. She stays in close touch with the Sheriff’s Department. Kelly was happy with me using her full name in this blog, but due to the ongoing nature of the harassment, I chose to use her first name only, and to not provide a complete picture of her.

• You can read more about Sharpiegate here: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/05/sharpie-ballots-trump-strategy-arizona-434372

• You Can read more about the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors certifying the election here: https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/11/20/maricopa-county-supervisors-meet-consider-certifying-election-results/6362991002/

• You can watch the Maricopa County Board meeting here: https://youtu.be/XUHPaJWiG68