Terrorized Georgia Poll Worker Forced to Sell Her House
The Big Lie conspiracy and right-wing media forced the mother-daughter team to flee their homes
A mother and daughter team who regularly worked the elections to do their part in the service of American democracy have, after two long and harrowing years, decided to sell their Atlanta house.
The harassment and death threats channeled their way thanks to Donald Trump’s Big Lie conspiracy and nearly destroyed them.
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic, and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State (Goebbels on the Big Lie).”
In Joseph Goebbels’s concise explanation of how a “big lie” works to unite people, if we replace the word “state” with “Trump,” then we get a very accurate picture of 2022.
And, thanks to the adherence to the lie by Trump, much of the Republican Party, and the right-wing information complex (Fox News, Newsmax, Breitbart, and so much more), innocent Americans have suffered.
The lives of innocent Americans have been turned upside down because they volunteered to work on election day 2020.
Ruby Freeman is packing up the house where she has lived for more than 20 years. The suburban Atlanta home holds countless memories — it’s where her online boutique clothing store flourished, and where she helped raise her grandson. It’s near her “special stores,” she says — the coffee shop, the tailor — where neighbors recognize her as Lady Ruby (How Mother-Daughter Election Workers Survived).
Ginger Mints
By December 3rd, three recounts had already been done in Georgia. Each time, the Biden lead grew larger. Then, a video showed up on right-wing sites showing Georgia elections worker Ruby Freeman handing her daughter, Shaye Moss, and a fellow elections worker a small item.
When asked what she handed her daughter, Freeman said that her daughter was feeling under the weather, so she gave her some ginger mints she had bouncing around in her purse.
“I have ginger mints in my purse. That’s what I have,” Freeman said. “That’s all I had to give her — and put my faith with it, knowing this is going to make her feel better (How Mother-Daughter Election Workers Survived).”
Ginger mints, hah! Well, that is what the right-wing lunatics said, not me. The loons said that Ruby was passing a USB thumb drive to her daughter. It was supposedly being used to change votes.
It was then, at the beginning of December, that Freeman and Moss were informed by their superior from the elections board that right-wing conspiracy nuts had pulled a video of Moss shoving a suitcase of votes under her desk. The stolen ballots, they said, were used to pad Biden’s lead.
“The suitcases they claim we had were issued ballot boxes that we use every election,” Moss explained (How Mother-Daughter Election Workers Survived).
Election workers nationwide after the 2020 election have been threatened, with many resigning their posts out of fear for their lives.
When Trump made his infamous phone call in December to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to complain about the “voter fraud” in his state, Trump specifically mentioned the “suitcase” of stolen ballots being moved around by Moss. Trump even called Freeman a “professional scammer and hustler.” (Clearly, he was referring to himself.)
After this phone call, their addresses appeared online, and people came to their houses. The death threats became so frequent and credible that the FBI got involved. Then, one day, some crazy, white MAGA Republicans knocked on Freeman’s door, and when she opened it, they started pushing and screaming they had come to make a citizen’s arrest.
The F.B.I. told her that she had to leave her home for her safety.
Freeman said she felt defeated, despondent, and on her own.
“I don’t know where I’m going, I don’t know what I’m doing,” she remembered thinking. “I’m just out here — I feel homeless.”
“How do you deal with that?” Moran asked.
“By the grace of God,” she said (How Mother-Daughter Election Workers Survived).
In hiding, Freeman and Moss would spend months living with family members or staying with friends in their community.
Eventually, they did return to their homes when things died down a bit, but Freeman is so fearful about the upcoming election that Trump will announce that he is running again. She fears her name will come up again.
She is selling the house, her home of 20 years, for no other reason than that MAGA Republicans could kill her.
The mother and daughter team, however, were not subdued. They have filed a lawsuit against Rudy Giuliani, who gave out their names in an appearance before the Georgia State Legislature. In December 2020, Giuliani appeared to ask that Georgia not certify a slate of electors because of the behavior captured on video.
The Giuliani lawsuit is proceeding through the courts. The Gateway Pundit is also being sued for knowingly disseminating false information about Freeman and Moss.
Arguably, the most crucial aspect of America’s grand experiment with government by the people and for the people was the right to vote. The peaceful transfer of power is probably something that historians would say was also a significant American contribution to civilized governance. Both of these “institutions” barely survived one Trump presidency.
Innocent and beautiful people like Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, women who, despite the systemic racism this nation still nurtures for them, proudly became part of our American tradition. Today, traumatized and fearful, they have chosen to leave jobs they loved for others.
They fear the supporters of Donald Trump.
All across the nation, election workers are quitting. Schools and churches that used to open their spaces so votes could be cast proudly now fear the trouble that the right-wing extremists could start.
In Monmouth County, New Jersey (my neck of the woods), Brian Graime of the Manalapan-Englishtown Regional School District said that they are cycling some of the schools out from being polling places in the future.
“Could it be somebody that’s there to vote? Could it be somebody who’s there to disrupt the voting? Could it be that one-in-a-million situation that has unfortunately occurred in Parkland, Sandy Hook, and Uvalde?” Graime said. “We do threat assessments constantly in our school district. We’re trying to protect ourselves from everything (Withdraw as Polling Places).”
As horrific and anti-American as all of this is, little else should have been expected when we elected Donald Trump to the White House.
All of this violence and the threats of violence will be reinforced and then institutionalized when we hand Congress back to the Republicans. Why are we doing this?
The act of casting a vote in our country has become just as imperiled and dangerous as going to school in our country has become — and this is precisely how the rightists want it: stricken with fear, less participatory, and with fewer places to vote.