Wired [unpaywalled]: “The agency also cautioned that it’s unable to get a grasp on the full scale of the threat, due to extremists increasingly using encrypted chat tools…Last month, the agency’s intelligence office emphasized in a report that “perceptions of voter fraud” had risen to become a primary “trigger” for the “mobilization to violence.” This is particularly true, the report says, among groups working to leverage the “concept of a potential civil war.” Fears about “crimes by migrants or minorities” are among other top “triggers,” it says…The documents show that DHS alerted dozens of agencies this summer to online chatter indicating potential attacks on election drop boxes—secured receptacles used in more than 30 states to collect mail-in voter ballots. The text highlights the efforts of an unnamed group to crowdsource information about “incendiary and explosive materials” capable of destroying the boxes and ballots. An extensive list of household mixtures and solvents, which are said to render voter ballots “impossible to process,” was also compiled by members of the group, the report says, and were openly shared online…Wendy Via, cofounder and president of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE), says the conclusion reached by DHS matches the consensus of experts in the field: “Election denialism is going to be the primary motivator—if there is going to be violence.” For decades, a growing number of states have adopted election drop boxes as a way to offer voters a dedicated, secure, and convenient way to submit voter ballots ahead of elections. Today, as many as 35 states allow drop boxes in some capacity, though a handful—nearly all southern—have outlawed their use, mostly over baseless claims about fraud and ballot stuffing. While drop boxes are no less secure than other forms of voting, Republicans have scrambled to block their use in key states, including Wisconsin, where Donald Trump blasted legislation expanding drop boxes as “only good for Democrats and cheating.” Via points to the Republican-led campaign aimed at banning and restricting access to election drop boxes in Wisconsin as a flash point for election denialism and possible violence…”