This is not normal.

When the ballot counting begins inside Arizona’s Maricopa County Tabulation Center this November, election workers will be protected behind doors and windows with bullet-proof glass and two layers of fencing. Security cameras will be monitored for suspicious activity inside and outside the building. A fleet of police drones and rooftop snipers will be at the ready.

In many ways, the county’s election headquarters has been transformed into “a fortress,” says Bill Gates, a member of the county’s Board of Supervisors who has received repeated death threats for rejecting bogus claims that officials helped steal elections in 2020 and 2022. He says the new safety measures reflect “the reality of elections in 2024.”

This is not making the point that CNN thinks it’s making.

The center may have gotten death threats but frankly these days who in politics hasn’t? The Biden-Harris DOJ thought it was fine to let mobs harass Supreme Court justices after Roe v. Wade was overturned. And yet a vote counting center now looks like something out of Communist China.

There’ll be more security there than at a Trump rally and that’s after two presidential assassinations.

And what exactly do they expect to happen there that requires drone fleets and rooftop snipers? A protest? Some people waving signs?

But it’s all about where the real sources of power are. Not elected officials and certainly not the voters. But those who count the votes. The really crucial ones.

That’s why Maricopa County has spent over $864,000 in federal funds and more than $3 million in county funds to bolster its election security and processes over the past four years.

Tax dollars at work.

There’s still not enough money to protect a former president and presidential candidate from assassins, but there’s plenty of money to turn election fraud centers into fortresses complete with rooftop snipers and fleets of drones.