(HorizonPost.com) – A Georgia county election official claimed in a recent interview that he has been the target of harassing voicemail messages and emails that the local sheriff’s department will not investigate.
Milton Kidd, the Douglas County voter registration director, told Georgia Stateline that he has received emails and voicemails from purported voters in the county who have used profanity, including the N-word.
Kidd suggested that the harassment was likely linked to Donald Trump’s stolen election claims following the 2020 election.
Kidd has grown so fearful of his safety that he never takes the same route between home and work on consecutive days and never drives the direct route, but makes random, sudden turns to make sure he isn’t being followed.
When asked about the messages, Douglas County Sheriff’s Captain Trent Wilson admitted that the messages left for Kidd were “very distasteful,” but pointed out that leaving distasteful messages wasn’t a crime.
Under Georgia law, messages are not considered harassing communications unless they are “threatening,” intimidating, “molesting,” or include threats of bodily harm.
Capt. Trent told Stateline that as a black man, he understood that nobody likes being called the N-word, but calling someone the N-word “is not a crime.”
Following the 2020 election, the US Justice Department established a task force to combat threats of violence against election workers.
Justice Department officials in March revealed that they were investigating dozens of threats to election workers and had thus far charged 20 people, 13 of whom had already been convicted. Seven of those received sentences of over 18 months in federal prison, according to John Keller, who heads up operations for the Justice Department’s task force.
Ohio resident Joshua Russell was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in March for leaving threatening voicemail messages for former Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (now the governor) telling her that she would either end up “behind bars” or “we will see you to the grave.”
That same month, James Clark of Massachusetts was sentenced to more than three years in federal prison for phoning in a bomb threat to then-Secretary of State Hobbs, warning that she must resign by February 6, 2021, or he would bomb her office.
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