one over at the Iowa state fair this week there are ponies, popcorn, big sanitary brand stand and politicians don't. The campaigning seemingly never ceases and neither does the need to keep those elections safe. There is a greater number of election related threats than this country has ever seen before. At the largest annual gathering of state election leaders this week, held this year in des Moines, the U. S. Department of Justice admitted it's been caught off guard by the number of physical threats to election officials and is now launching a task force to investigate and prosecute those threats. The response has been inadequate. Physical security is sort of a new one. New Mexico's Secretary of State, Maggie Toulouse Oliver has been the president of the National Association of Secretaries of State this past year we spoke to her inside the Iowa state capitals ornate law library. This is the seventh or eighth Secretaries of State conference that I've covered and I don't recall ever seeing uniformed police officers and plainclothes agents. Correct? Why is that needed this year? Most of us have experienced threats to our lives since november. I personally have. Yes. Death threats. Yes. Minnesota's Secretary of State says he got a threat while he's been in des Moines. So as recently as the last 48 hours I received one of those while here at this conference, correct. Even poll workers may soon have to be protected one in three told the Brennan center for justice recently. They don't feel safe and one in six plan to leave before the 2024 election. They are vital to our democracy. And Maine's Secretary of State plans to convene a meeting with clerks statewide and law enforcement in the coming months. Certainly some clerks and Maine have experienced threats to their personal safety in their lives. Another new risk to elections discussed here, partisan ballot reviews sought in states such as Arizona, Wisconsin and pennsylvania costing taxpayers money to replace some election equipment turned over to non election administrators and therefore no longer secure. Even some of the republican secretaries we spoke with were critical. What I don't want to do is just open the rooms up and have a mob come in and rip open the machines and look for bamboo ballots. We don't need people coming around telling us How to run our elections, but I also don't think that's helpful. Third parties who are not election administration. Exactly in all the more than 16 chief election officials we spoke with told us of their efforts to fight misinformation and disinformation, including false claims. Vote totals are not already verified. Is it a failure of communication? We need to do a better job letting the public not only know that we do these, but how we do them how they can participate. So yes, we do have that work to do, which is why on monday the secretaries of state created a task force on vote verification to focus on what they called the critical issue of post election audits. Mississippi Secretary of State, Michael Watson, whose state is one of the few not to mandate an audit, said in our interview. That should now change. So you're going to recommend to your state lawmakers that that be passed into law? We are we are we looking at that this year and these people who don't trust the elections, Please volunteer to be a poll worker, disinformation, ransomware, cyber attacks and now threats to election workers. It's a never ending roller coaster of stomach turning threats to our elections in des Moines Iowa, I'm Chief national investigative correspondent Mark Albert.