JOHN YANG: With about two and a half weeks to go until election day, some places around the country are still looking for people to work at polling places.

One reason for that could be the threats and harassment that's been aimed at election officials since the false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

Tonight, we hear from current and former election officials across the country.

This report is from our partners at News 21 that's a national student reporting initiative based at Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism.

WOMAN: Tuesday, 7:11 pm.

ANDREW NICKELS: Hi, Tina Barton, this is a pissed off patriots of America.

Guess what?

You're going to pay for it.

You will pay for it.

You should be in prison, if not the least paid, you should be executed under federal prison.

We will take you out your family, your life, and you deserve the throat to the knife.

Watch your back.

Silly.

Watch your back.

TINA BARTON, Former City Clerk, Rochester Hills, Michigan: So when I first got that message, it was the Tuesday after the November general election, obviously walking into the office completely exhausted, and then saw that the light was flashing on my phone and listen to the voicemail.

It's not something that any election official signs up for, and it's unfortunate that it is a burden that a lot of us are bearing in this field.

TONYA WICHMAN, Board of Elections, Defiance County, Ohio: We had a gentleman that liked to come into the office just to question what we did loudly or cause an issue.

He would stand at ball games and just stare at me, or try to make me uncomfortable when I'd go watch my nephew play basketball.

The accumulation of all of that ended up in 2020 on election day, when he was yelling at my poll workers, and it kind of turned into a circus throughout the day.

He turned me into the state.

Showed up at our board meeting, and I told the board, I said, this is something I'll finish this election, but this is something I really need to think about, if it's worth the mental drain of trying to defend yourself all the time.

TAMMY KAPPEN, Clerk, Defiance County, Ohio: I think being from a small town, people are just they know what they know, and they're really not willing to be educated or hear any other type of point of view.

It's a difficult place to be in when you have such nonsense being spread, kind of on the national level.

And then it comes down to us, where we have faith that we're doing a really good job, and we're, you know, we do things in a bipartisan team, and we work so well together.

And then you have someone saying, you know, don't have faith in that.

TATE FALL, Director of Elections, Cobb County, Georgia: I think here in Georgia, people have a lot of opinions about elections.

Right?

Whenever I meet someone, normally I don't tell them what I do right away.

And then, if they ask, I'll answer, and then they'll say, Oh, you work in politics.

I said, No, no, I don't work in politics.

My job is to administer and grade the test.

That's it.

I was accosted by someone for where I work.

I stupidly was wearing my county rain jacket, and she was very kind, and then she saw my jacket, and just kind of launched into this, the election was stolen.

You don't count my votes.

I know my ballot is not counted.

For a long time, Cobb was Republican stronghold in Georgia, right?

And then people who have lived here their whole lives, they feel like all of a sudden Cobb became blue, and that was in 2020.

How could this place I've lived in my whole life all of a sudden be blue?

Something must be going on.

And I think that it's really fear, this fear that the place that they've known their whole lives has changed.

I'll have conversations for an hour with voters.

I'll bring them back here in my office.

I'll sit down with them.

I'll show them tapes and paperwork and everything you could think of, and they'll stand up and they'll shake my hand, and they'll say things for your time, but I still don't believe you.

When half of the country doesn't believe in the foundation of our democracy, I don't know what's next, and it scares me to think about that.

CHRIS HARVEY, Georgia Peace Officers Standard and Training Council: When I talk to people about the 2020, election, I always make the distinction between the election itself in November, which went very, very smoothly.

It was only the results of the election and the aftermath that really -- that really kind of blew up.

I got a call from a friend in Washington, DC, who told me that I had appeared on the dark web and that I'd been doxxed, and that they put my home address, picture of me, contact information and stuff like that, saying that I was going to be killed because I had not verified absentee ballots or something.

And, you know, they said, you know, every time you leave your house, make sure you tell your family goodbye, because you're not going to see them again.

RUSS SKINNER, Sheriff, Maricopa County, Arizona: Maricopa County, the elections process was a very sleepy, quiet one day event for the most part.

What we saw in 2020 was obviously something that really shook us and our community.

I mean, obviously a lot more security measures taking place with fencing, but we do additional measures.

You'll see everything from the roadway to the sidewalks to the parking lot fortified.

And I hate to say that and use that, but that's the reality, and our number one job there is to make sure that they're safe and that they can carry out the process that needs to be done.

MAN: I'm just disgusted by people like you.

You're a, joke.

You deserve to be -- WOMAN: I'm sorry, I cannot tolerate that kind of language, if you would like to talk to me in a civilized -- MAN: Someone should shoot you in the head.

WOMAN: I'm hanging up.

TOD LIDDY, Attorney's Office, Maricopa County, Arizona: I've been at the Maricopa County Attorney's Office for 16 years, where I've gotten letters to me.

Actually, it's a letter to my wife, but it came to the office saying that this person was going to kill our fourth child, and they named him.

So my phone rang, and I was told go upstairs to sit in county attorney's office.

The FBI is there.

I need to talk to me.

And they had two very specific threats to me and to my children that they had got on the internet, and they put armed guards on my house, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

This is what they give you when the FBI tells you, you better wear body armor and you better carry a firearm.

JOANA FRANCESCUT, Assistant County Clerk, Shasta County, California: I've built this team.

I've built a very resilient and strong team.

However, I am having some team members leave because this work is hard.

In the last six months, I've lost eight people, eight people that have had out of 21 it's a third of my staff say, this is too much.

I cannot do this any longer.

That's a lot.

Before 2018 it was a lot of fun.

The process was fun.

We really enjoyed seeing people.

Election Day was a great day.

Post-election in 2020 we saw a huge shift in how we were being treated.

We completed an election during a pandemic, and ensured that everybody had the right to vote with the record numbers, the highest number of voters that we've ever had, then highest number of ballots we were counting in Shasta County.

And we did that very quickly and efficiently.

And instead of getting celebrated, we're getting yelled at because of the voting system we used.

People were angry because we handed the sharpies on election day and then post-election, they heard a rumor that Sharpies were bad and they shouldn't have used Sharpies so they didn't think their vote was counted without understanding the big picture and having all the pieces in front of them, they're making assumptions based on what they believe, instead of understanding that election administration is a very complex task/ WOMAN: There has been a dehumanization of those in the elections world, I think that for a lot of people, they're angry at government.

They're angry at all things elections.

The truth is, is we have secure elections.

The truth is we have accurate elections.

WOMAN: The election officials across the country are amazing.

Everyone wants to do it.

Right?

WOMAN: Yes, it's hard, right now.

Yes, I'm probably the most stressed I've ever been in my life, but I still come to work smiling every day because there's joy throughout every single day, even when it's hard.