After the 2020 presidential election, death threats against Bill Gates and fellow election officials escalated due to their refusal to endorse election fraud claims. Gates described feeling like pariahs within the Republican Party. He faced violent harassment, necessitating him and his family to hide during moments of unrest, including January 6, 2021. He received direct threats, including an email threatening to poison his food. After enduring ongoing threats and PTSD, he left his position in 2024 to focus on a new program at Arizona State University about democracy.
"That's when we became pariahs within the Republican Party because we were not willing to sign on to this whole election-being-stolen narrative," Gates, a life-long Republican, told The Register.
Gates remembered, "We had been doxxed at the point. So Gates and his family spent two nights in hiding."
Gates shared that he received an email stating, 'I'm going to poison your food.' Last January, the man who sent the threatening email was sentenced to three years' probation.
After suffering from PTSD, he vacated his supervisorial seat in 2024 to lead a new Arizona State University program, Mechanics of Democracy Laboratory.
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