Georgia officials approve funds to purchase 'panic buttons' for election officials due to potential harassment

SEATTLE - The Board of Commissioners in Cobb County, Georgia, are taking steps to ensure election workers' safety by equipping them with panic buttons that would allow them to quickly contact authorities in case of an emergency.

This week, officials approved $47,250 in funding to purchase around 200 devices for election workers.

Located in the Atlanta metropolitan area, Cobb County is considered to be a "pivot county" in Georgia by Ballotpedia ahead of this year's presidential elections, meaning it flipped between voting Democrat and Republican in recent elections.

The so-called panic buttons are about the size of a credit card and can be worn on lanyards or tucked in pockets. The devices pair with users' cellphones to dispatch GPS locations to authorities when activated.

In 2022, Georgia used a cellphone-based program that allowed counties that opted in to directly text information to law enforcement agencies. Mike Hassinger, a spokesman for the state's secretary of state's office, said that nearly half of Georgia's 159 counties used the program.

Panic buttons are the latest way state and local officials are seeking to combat hostile working conditions faced by some election workers. A recent survey conducted by Brennan Center for Justice found that 38% of local election officials across the country experienced "threats, harassment or abuse."

Since 2020, 17 states and the District of Columbia have increased protections for poll workers and election officials, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures

The money approved for panic buttons is part of a broader $2.4 million election technology and security package, which will pay for a range of other things such as Americans with Disabilities Act compliance, poll pad printers and personnel hiring.

Georgia is not the only state taking steps to ensure a safer process for election and poll workers. According to Runbeck CEO Jeff Ellington, Colorado officials also count with several panic buttons.

Gwinnett County, also in the Atlanta metropolitan area, was too considering using panic buttons as part of their security planning, but according to Zachary Manifold, the elections supervisor, he heard that panic buttons had caused false alarms elsewhere.

"I think probably my biggest concern about it is from what we've heard from, the schools implemented here maybe a couple years ago — they said there's a huge learning curve," Manifold said. "The one thing we heard back from our schools' police chief was that it's not quite as easy to implement as you think. We're trying to figure out if maybe there's something else, so we're kicking around the idea of it."