🧩 BND Motif Index · M1757
Jail the vote counters
Those who run an election, clerks, officials, the volunteers who count, are threatened with prosecution or jail unless they purge the rolls, set aside the disputed ballots or stop the count.
📜 Plots🗂️ Coercion and Intimidation🗂️ Elections
- 5claims filed under it
- 9left shows it came up on
- 2center shows it came up on
- 3right shows it came up on
- 3claims retold online
⚠️ A story people tell, not a claim that it's true.
A motif is the shape of a story as its tellers tell it, named the way a folklorist names a tale type, so the same story told about other people, by the other side or in another year lands in the same place. Some of the claims below are true, many are false. Arguing against a story is often a story of its own, its answer (Voter fraud is answered by Voter suppression, Lawfare by No one is above the law), and we file it there; where no answer has a motif yet, the arguments against a story sit with its tellings.
🪜 Its family
what it rests on, what rests on it, and the motifs that answer it
🪜 rests on 🧩 Intimidation
🎙️ Who it came up with
the shows we follow where its claims came up (9 left-leaning, 2 center, 3 right-leaning so far), colored by the show's lean; the bar is how many of its claims each one heard
- 🐘 Bannon's War Room 2 claims
- 🐘 Clay Travis & Buck Sexton 2 claims
- 🫏 CNN 5 Things 2 claims
- ⚖️ Forum (KQED) 2 claims
- 🫏 Hacks on Tap 2 claims
- 🐘 Louder with Crowder 2 claims
- 🫏 No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen 2 claims
- 🫏 Pod Save America 2 claims
- 🫏 The Adam Mockler Show 2 claims
- ⚖️ The Brian Lehrer Show (WNYC) 2 claims
- 🫏 The Kyle Kulinski Show 2 claims
- 🫏 The MeidasTouch Podcast 2 claims
- left-leaning
- center
- right-leaning
➕ 2 more shows
🎙️ 2 more shows
"Came up on" means one of its claims was heard on the show: told, reported or argued against. We don't yet mark which. Show leans are our own grouping of the shows we transcribe.
📰 In the news
the stories its claims were told about, the most told first (matched by our tools, so a link can be wrong)
- 📰 DOJ warns California election officials of legal risks for counting suspected noncitizen ballots 2026-10-18
- 📰 Federal judge blocks DOJ from threatening election officials 2026-10-31 to 2026-11-03
- 📰 Democrats sue Trump administration over voter roll efforts 2026-10-22
🧶 Its claims
what's been told in this shape, in our words, by who told it: newest first in each; a claim's dots are the shows it came up on, in their lean's color (point at them for their names)
Told on the left 0
claims heard on left-leaning shows, and no right-leaning one
🦗 No claim heard only on the left so far.
Told on the right 0
claims heard on right-leaning shows, and no left-leaning one
🦗 No claim heard only on the right so far.
Told on both sides 2
claims heard on left- and right-leaning shows alike
- 2026-10-25 “Donald Trump and his administration are attempting to subvert midterm elections through thuggish intimidation of election officials and voters.” 14
- 2026-10-24 “The Trump administration is on a campaign to intimidate state and local election officials.” 14
Retold online 3
claims many people posted in their own words
- 2026-10-31 “A federal judge blocked the Justice Department from threatening or intimidating election officials regarding ballot processing.”
- 2026-10-22 “Democrats are suing the Trump administration for allegedly using intimidation and unlawful pressure to interfere with the midterm elections.”
- 2026-10-18 “The Trump administration is threatening to jail California election officials over unproven claims about noncitizen voters.”
M1757 · first seen 2026-11-09 · what this is · how the index works