Jane Timm for NBC News:

Lindsey Taylor loved running elections here.

The previous registrar had spent nearly three decades in the job, and Taylor, 37, hoped to do the same when she was hired in 2019. She loved her staff and the volunteer poll workers, and she took pride in the detail-oriented work. She implemented dozens of new laws in 2020, ran elections through the pandemic and impressed many in the rural, conservative, tight-knit community of Buckingham County.

But then the voter fraud claims started.

In January, the GOP assumed control of the Buckingham County Electoral Board that oversees her office, and local Republicans began advancing baseless voter fraud claims that baffled her. The electoral board made it clear it wanted her out of the job.

“There were people saying that they had heard all these rumors — that the attorney general was going to indict me,” Taylor said, days after leaving the office for the last time. “Mentally, I just — I couldn’t take it anymore.”

Three weeks ago, frustrated and heartbroken, Taylor, along with two part-time staffers, quit. Their resignations followed a deputy registrar who left in February, citing the same conflict. 

The four departures left residents without a functioning registrar’s office; there was no way to register to vote or certify candidate paperwork, at least temporarily.

A state elections worker arrived in town a week later to try to pick up the pieces, looking through drawers and opening the mail, as the two remaining members of the electoral board — both Republicans, because the one Democrat had also recently quit — began the difficult process of restaffing a completely barren department.