WHERE THE BUBBLE BOYS GET THEIR MARCHING ORDERS:

This story contains offensive language.

The story had a bombshell headline: "Thousands of fake votes" had been discovered in Madison, Wisconsin, two weeks after Democrat Joe Biden narrowly beat then-President Donald Trump in the state.

The bogus report from the far-right website Gateway Pundit drew attention to a set of initials - MLW - inscribed on what it claimed were "fake" ballots. Then a reader posted a comment on the story correctly identifying MLW: Maribeth L. Witzel-Behl, the Madison city clerk, whose duties include administering elections.

Other commenters soon called for Witzel-Behl's execution. She found one post especially unnerving. It recommended a specific bullet for killing her - a 7.62 millimeter round for an AK-47 assault rifle.

Witzel-Behl was stunned by the threats and the angry calls that poured into her office. Contrary to the story's insinuation that the initials meant the ballots were fake, in reality she and her staff wrote her initials on all absentee ballots, before they were given to voters, as a matter of policy.

Witzel-Behl is among 25 election officials and workers targeted by more than 100 threatening and hostile communications that have cited the Gateway Pundit since last year's election, according to a Reuters review of the materials, which included emails, letters and phone messages, as well as comments posted on the website's stories.

The messages targeted officials and staff in four jurisdictions that featured repeatedly in false or misleading Pundit reports on voter-fraud claims: the Wisconsin cities of Madison and Milwaukee; Fulton County, Georgia; and Maricopa County, Arizona.

At least five of the officials, including Witzel-Behl, received threats they considered serious enough to report to law enforcement. Among those targeted were a municipal election director in Milwaukee and a Republican supervisor in Maricopa County.  The targets also included Ruby Freeman and Wandrea "Shaye" Moss, a mother and daughter who staffed a ballot counting operation in Fulton County; their ordeal was detailed this week by Reuters.

After Gateway Pundit ran an Aug. 14 story about them, a commenter posted below the piece: "The two women are traitors to the country and should be hung by the neck until dead."

Two additional officials, a Fulton County election commissioner and another Maricopa county supervisor, blamed the Gateway Pundit for inciting serious threats of violence they received after the site implicated the officials in baseless claims of election-rigging.

Tweet   @brothersjudd