Election officials call on law enforcement to protect them from angry Trump supporters

Election officials are calling on law enforcement to provide them with more security, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The threats have primarily been coming from Trump supporters angry over what they think is a "stolen" 2020 election. Others directly accuse the officials of participating in voter fraud.

After a task force was launched about a year ago by the Justice Department to address such threats, four people have been federally charged.

“A common refrain I hear from my members is that nobody is going to take this seriously until something bad happens, and we are all braced for the worst,” Amy Cohen, executive director of the nonpartisan National Association of State Election Directors, said in written testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee. “Until recently, this was not a field you went into thinking it could cost you your life."

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One challenge for the task force is deciding what actually constitutes a threat. After reviewing over 1,000 reports of threats, only 11% met the threshold for a federal criminal investigation.

Nevertheless, the Justice Department reiterated its commitment to investigating reports of threats and said the task force has also provided briefings to election officials across the country.