Election officials in key battleground states say they're prepared for threats to poll workers ahead of 2024 elections

A bipartisan panel of four secretaries of state from key battleground states on Thursday told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” that they’re prepared to execute a safe and secure presidential election, despite previous threats to election workers.

“Should any of that ugliness that we all experienced in 2020 return,” Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt said, a new election threat task force is prepared to respond quickly.

Asked whether enough people have volunteered to be election workers in Georgia, where two 2020 poll workers were harassed and threatened for months after conspiracy theorists accused them of tampering with ballots, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger told moderator Kristen Welker, “We’re actually in pretty good shape. The counties have done a great job of recruitment.”

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson added that she’s more focused this year on how to protect election workers, telling Welker: “We have to also protect the people who protect democracy. And that’s a lot of what we’re working to do to prepare for this year.”

Asked if they’ve personally been threatened since the 2020 presidential election, each secretary of state said they had been.

“It impacted all of us,” Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said, adding: “One of the ways that I have been looking at this and addressing this is telling the really hard truth. And that is this: Threats against elections officials in the United States of America is domestic terrorism.”

Schmidt agreed, telling Welker, “The point of these threats is really to terrorize and is to intimidate and to try to keep any of us and our election officials at the county level and at the precinct level from doing or not doing something that is their