From Politico:

Election officials feel besieged by conspiracy theorists and fear that a lack of support for their work is going to squeeze experts out of the field, according to a new poll.

The survey from the Brennan Center for Justice, a liberal-leaning think tank and advocacy group, showed that nearly 8 in 10 local election officials feel that threats against them and their colleagues have increased in recent years, and a majority say that they are either very or somewhat concerned about the safety of their fellow administrators.

The question of how to deal with threats has become a constant conversation among election officials at all levels of government, many of whom fear that it could discourage people from staying in their field of election administration, or even joining it in the first place….

Election officials are dealing with the threats alongside a pervasive sense that the rest of government is not doing enough to support them. In the Brennan poll, a narrow majority of local election officials said they believed that state governments were either “not doing anything” to support local election officials, or were “taking some steps, but it’s not enough and it should be doing more.” While 71 percent said local government “is doing a good job” of supporting them, nearly 80 percent gave the federal government a failing grade on protecting election workers.

“I think it shows that there’s been a failure in responding to what is a real crisis,” said Lawrence Norden, the senior director of the Brennan Center’s elections and government program. “There’s been a failure of policy response to it. And despite some nice words from many politicians, not nearly enough has been done.”…

Officials place a chunk of the blame for the threats they are facing on social media companies. Nearly 2 in 3 said they believed the spread of false information on social media made their jobs more dangerous, and more than three-quarters said social media companies have not done enough to stop the spread of false information.