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Tuesday’s hearing of the House select committee probing the January 6 attack on the US Capitol ended with perhaps the single most emotional segment in the hearings to date: a mother-daughter team of former Georgia poll workers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, discussing what it was like to be singled out as part of former President Donald Trump’s conspiracy theories that the election was stolen — and that poll workers like Moss and Freeman were involved in the plot. In doing so, they highlighted a serious and ongoing threat to American democracy...

The result was a wave of harassment that ruined the two women’s lives. Moss testified that she received “a lot of threats, wishing death upon me — telling me that, you know, I’ll be in jail with my mother and saying things like ‘be glad it’s 2020 and not 1920.’” She went into hiding and said she gained 60 pounds from the stress. Trump supporters attacked her grandmother’s home, barging in and “exclaiming that they were coming in to make a citizens arrest.” Freeman, for her part, used to proudly wear T-shirts with her nickname — “Lady Ruby” — on them. “Now,” she testified in a videotaped deposition, “I won’t even introduce myself by my name anymore.” She continued: There is nowhere I feel safe. Nowhere. Do you know how it feels to have the president of the United States target you? The president of the United States is supposed to represent every American. Not to target one. But he targeted me, Lady Ruby, a small business owner, a mother, a proud American citizen, who stood up to help Fulton County run an election in the middle of the pandemic.

While Moss and Freeman were special targets of Trump and Giuliani, they were not the only poll workers to experience vicious harassment in the last election cycle. A 2021 survey found that 17 percent of America’s local election officials experienced threats due to their jobs during the 2020 election cycle. David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, told me last year that this was very far from normal prior to 2020.

Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman: January 6 testimony reveals threat to democracy - Vox