Just Security
In early December 2020, Ruby Freeman received an email: “We are coming for you and your family. Ms. Ruby, the safest place for you right now is in prison. Or you will swing from trees.”

Freeman had been a temporary poll worker in Fulton County, Georgia, in the 2020 election. Her daughter, Shaye Moss, was with her at the State Farm Arena in Atlanta, counting ballots as a county employee on the night of the election. Footage of the pair engaging in routine vote-counting procedures went viral after Rudy Giuliani and his legal team began to falsely claim it showed them conducting election fraud. As the lies about what happened that night in Atlanta spread on social media, Freeman and Moss were thrown into a firestorm. Racist, violent language arrived via letters, texts, phone calls, emails, social media messages, and even in person at each of their front doors.

Freeman and Moss’ lives were forever changed. “I miss my old neighborhood because I was me,” Freeman said as she testified in a subsequent defamation trial against Giuliani about the damage to her reputation. “I could introduce myself. Now I just don’t have a name.”

The two women are among thousands of election workers who have faced threats, intimidation, and abuse as a result of the election lies that have gained traction in recent years. More broadly, the spread of false election information has eroded cornerstones of American democracy, contributing to flagging confidence in American elections, disenfranchisement of voters, and massive turnover among election workers. MORE