60 minutes overtime
this week on 60 minutes we reported on voting rights it's a topic primed to be top of mind
as states gear up for their midterm primary elections as we saw in 2020 some of the most
heated anger around voting has not been directed at the politicians on the ballot
but at those charged with overseeing elections we spoke with two lawyers who say these public
officials have come under attack for simply doing their jobs ben ginsburg is a republican
attorney who has spent his career steeped in election law during the 2000 florida recount
he was a key architect of the controversial legal strategy that won george w bush the presidency
bob bauer was barack obama's white house counsel and a senior adviser to the biden campaign
the two are so concerned about threats to election workers they've teamed up to create a nationwide
network of lawyers to provide defense and advice pro bono to election officials facing intimidation
or legal jeopardy they're under unprecedented threats and indeed harassment and our goal is
to give election officials and their staff full pro bono legal support through a volunteer network
of of lawyers so that no election official who does feel under threat will go without
representation that he or she feels is solidly and strongly behind them it's gotten to that level
it's that dangerous yes they're being threatened these threats come in a variety of forms there
are statutory enactments in some states that put election officials a potential risk of
criminal prosecution for simply making mistakes so they'll be continually looking over their shoulder
there are threats being issued at them by state legislatures that are claiming that they engaged
in some kind of misconduct and conducting sham audits to allegedly expose wrongdoing that in
fact never occurred and then they're personal threats they're receiving personal threats to
the safety of themselves and their families in all of those cases we want to make sure through the
network which has been set up formally set up that has enlisted many many lawyers around the country
that any one of those officials who wants consultation reassurance or active representation
to defend against these threats has that help available on a free of charge basis
have any election officials around the country reached out to you already sadly yes when we began
this we anticipated this as a network that would have an increasing workload the closer we got to
the elections and we've frankly been stunned by the number of election officials we've heard from
already who have felt that they needed to be able to talk to an attorney of their own to be able to
resolve the either the threats of the law or the personal threats to them what are they telling you
you know it's different depending on the case but by and large the activities that they have
always undertaken to run our elections are being politicized criminalized and basically taken to a
different level of uncomfortableness for them are you hearing this from election officials
as well as perhaps people who volunteer on election day are you hearing it from
everybody across the board we're hearing from people in official them primarily people who have
formal statutory regulatory responsibility for elections but one of the messages that
we're sending out is that those who are threatening them threatening these officials
whether they're full-time whether they're volunteers whether they're in positions of
the most senior responsibility or they're simply on the staff those who threaten them
need to know they cannot act with impunity why i'm particularly concerned at this stage is that the
people i've represented for the last 40 years the republican party is taking a position that i think
is not supportable by the facts and does have a particularly pernicious effect on the democracy