Election officials say threats are escalating ahead of 2024 vote: "A heightened state of anxiety"

With less than two months to go until Election Day, and with former President Donald Trump continuing to repeat baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen, the issue of election integrity will likely remain at the forefront of many voters' minds.

Election officials from seven battleground states convened in Atlanta last week to compare notes and prepare for Election Day. Four of them — one Democrat and three Republicans — spoke with CBS News about the stress and anxiety of their jobs, and also their conviction that elections are conducted freely and fairly.

Asked what emotion this year's election fills him with, Republican Gabriel Sterling, chief operating officer for Georgia's office of secretary of state, said, "I feel like it should be joy, but there's some angst."

"The biggest thing I worry about is the possibility of violence by people who lose," he said.

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, said, "We're daily receiving threats, whether it's through voicemails, emails, social media or in person." 

Benson said she personally is receiving threats, "and it's escalating."

"They're all rooted in lies and misinformation, which is always disappointing and sad, but at the same time, it's real," she said.

Republican Bill Gates, a member of the Board of Supervisors for Arizona's Maricopa County, has spoken openly about his need for therapy in the face of hostility driven by election denialism.

"This has unfortunately become a way of life, and we've invested as a board in metal detectors, in fencing, in cameras," he said. "I wish we didn't have to do this, but we do."

Gates said that despite the threats, he's "gone and gotten the support that I need and I'm feeling great."

In Georgia, poll supervisors are given a direct line to report trouble. It's a text tool that will "notify the state election's office, the county election's office and the local sheriff's office if there's an issue," Sterling said, noting the system is in place for a range of problems that could crop up.

"Is it somebody yelling at people in the parking lot or is it somebody with a gun?" he said.

When asked about the concern some voters have about the possibility of undocumented immigrants voting, Benson said, "I understand the fear, but it's an unfounded fear."

Gates agreed, calling the specter of widespread voting from undocumented immigrants "a bogeyman."

"It's not happening," he said. "This is not something that people should be concerned about."

Philadelphia City Commissioner Seth Bluestein, a Republican, said, "We're just not seeing it in any real numbers."

Bluestein said that if he could dispel one piece of election misinformation it would be, "that there are magical ballot drops in the middle of the night." 

"That window of time from when the polls close until the networks are able to call the race is where that window of misinformation can spread," he said.

Gates said he wishes he could do away with "the conspiracy theory that our tabulation machines are connected to the internet. They're not."

After the 2020 election, Sterling chastised fellow Republicans for inciting unrest with election denying rhetoric.

"For 200 years, the loser accepting the outcome and coming back to fight again in two to four years was the way the system worked, and we all accepted it," Sterling said. "We have to get back to that being the normal way of dealing with elections."

Benson lamented, "We've now endured four years of that same rhetoric. And that's why I think all of us do feel a little bit of a heightened state of anxiety going to this cycle that it's even more possible than it was in those darkest days of 2020 that we could see that rhetoric transform into violent acts in the weeks ahead. And we all have to brace ourselves for that."

Gates said that he continues to be "disappointed by many people in the Republican Party — elected officials who continue to be silent in the face of these threats. We cannot normalize threats of violence against anyone, but particularly those people who are literally running our democracy."