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It’s no surprise that legislators on both sides of the aisle receive hate mail, social media harassment and threats. All elected officials are targets from time to time. It’s not ok, yet it’s hard to stop.

Now, local election officials—the people who administer elections—are targets, too. First, who are these people? Then, what’s up with harassment?

Election officials are the more than 8,000 government employees who run elections (along with more than 100,000 poll workers). Metaphorically, they’re the face of democracy. Practically, they’re responsible for answering voter questions; testing, deploying and storing election equipment; recruiting and training poll workers; finding polling locations; providing accurate public information; protecting against cybersecurity threats; and more.

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Leading up to Tuesday’s trip to the polls, there was a lot of fear on both sides of the recall issue about whether or not voters really understood the choice they were being asked to make.

President and founder of the California Voter Foundation, Kim Alexander, spoke with FOX40 weeks before the election and shared concerns that voters may be confused by all the different ballot layouts.

Alexander joined FOX40’s Sonseeharay Tonsall following Gov. Gavin Newsom’s defeat of the recall effort about the biggest lessons learned from this election.

“We had 3,200 voting sites across the state operating in California,” Alexander said. “And really, I can count in single digits the number of incidents that I heard about. And I think that the lesson I took away from that is by mailing everybody a ballot and giving them plenty of time to turn it in by mail or at drop-off locations prior to election day we really preload the voting process to alleviate pressure on voting sites on election day.”

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CLAIM: Officials counted “9 million mail in ballots” in an hour in the California gubernatorial recall election, whereas it took some states weeks to tabulate results in the 2020 presidential election.

AP’S ASSESSMENT: Missing context. California’s recall election results were tabulated quickly in part because election officials were able to process mail-in ballots prior to Election Day. While The Associated Press and others have called the election, official counting continues.

THE FACTS: The AP declared Tuesday night that Gov. Gavin Newsom had defeated a GOP-led recall effort, based on the initial results of votes cast. In a tweet shared on Instagram, a conservative writer questioned the state’s quick tabulation of millions of votes, suggesting something was suspicious.

Excerpt:

Former president Donald Trump’s false voter fraud claims found new life in California’s biggest election this year.

The top Republican seeking to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) in Tuesday’s recall declined before the election to say whether he could accept the results. A website affiliated with his campaign invites visitors to “sign a petition to stop the fraud of the California recall election.” And a previous version of the site — published before the election took place — blamed voter fraud for Newsom being “reinstated” as governor.