A self-proclaimed “First Amendment auditor” barged into the Bernalillo County, N.M., elections office in May, shot video of workers testing voting machines and accused them of hiding what they were doing from the public.

When the man posted the video on his YouTube channel with half a million subscribers, the harassment of the staff got worse: A deluge of hostile emails and phone calls, including cursing, personal attacks and warnings.

“The language was, ‘You’ll get what’s coming to you. You guys are stealing the election.’ It was overwhelming,” said Nathan Jaramillo, the county’s elections administrator. He said local FBI agents told him the messages did not rise to the level of illegal threats, but instead were speech protected by the Constitution. Neither the YouTuber nor anyone else would face charges.

It’s a little-understood reality of the Justice Department’s expanding efforts to address the possibility of intimidation and violence around November’s elections: While the agency is conducting training seminars for local officials, setting up regional and national command posts and investigating scores of allegations, it is bringing criminal charges only in a small number of cases. And each of those takes a long time to prosecute.

Justice officials say they are limited in taking more aggressive actions due to free speech protections and long-standing department policies based on federal law that prohibits stationing armed federal personnel at polling sites. The immediate responsibility for protecting election officials and voters, they said, falls primarily to local law enforcement.

In some jurisdictions, local leaders have been resistant to greater federal intervention, citing skepticism about the Justice Department’s motivations. But many other local officials and staff say they want federal authorities to do much more, including speeding up the pace of prosecutions and better publicizing the investigations and other measures they are pursuing.

“Unfortunately, we haven’t seen the action match their words,” said Clint Hickman, a Republican supervisor who chaired the Maricopa County, Ariz., governing board during the 2020 presidential election and rejected efforts by allies of then-President Donald Trump to help block Joe Biden’s victory.

Federal authorities prosecuted one case of threats made against Hickman, but he said “hundreds, if not thousands” of others have gone unaddressed. He said he opted not to run for reelection in part because of the “chilling effect” posed by the threatening communications.

More than three years after Attorney General Merrick Garland created a federal Election Threats Task Force, local elections officials have made more than 2,000 reports of disruptive protesters and menacing emails, phone messages and social media posts.

The most jarring have threatened murder, rape, mass shootings, bombings and violence against children.

A verbal threat rises to a potential illegal act, federal officials said, if it conveys a serious intent to act on a threat of unlawful violence against a specific individual or group. Other nasty messages may be unpleasant or amount to harassment — but, absent other actions related to the communications, they are not prosecutable under the Justice Department’s interpretation of the First Amendment.

Garland’s task force has brought 18 criminal indictments against a total of 20 defendants, according to federal records, including two cases where perpetrators have fired shots. One of those cases, in which a mayoral candidate’s sweater was grazed by a bullet ended with a guilty plea; the other, in which three defendants are accused of shooting at the homes of elected officials, is awaiting a trial date.

Twelve cases have resulted in convictions, with eight defendants sentenced to between one and four years in federal prison. Five individuals are awaiting sentencing. One case in Las Vegas ended in an acquittal last year — a verdict that helped propel Nevada’s state legislature to approve a law that enhances penalties for election threats — and five prosecutions are ongoing.

Aiming to send a deterrence message, Garland convened a task force meeting in early September at Justice Department headquarters that included his top deputy, Lisa Monaco, and FBI Director Christopher A. Wray. The attorney general highlighted some of the convictions and noted that task force officials have participated in more than two dozen conferences, training seminars and tabletop security exercises since March.

“If you threaten to harm or kill an election worker or official or volunteer, the Justice Department will find you, and we will hold you accountable,” Garland said.

The moves to intimidate — which law enforcement experts attribute to political polarization, domestic extremism, online disinformation networks and foreign meddling — have prompted an exodus of state and local elections officials and imposed serious strains on the nation’s voting infrastructure.

Election officials said escalating political violence — including two recent apparent assassination attempts against Trump, the Republican presidential nominee — has amped up their anxiety. In mid-September, the FBI and U.S. Postal Inspection Service announced they were investigating suspicious packages containing a white powder substance and sent to election officials in more than 15 states. Multiple secretaries of state were targeted in August in alleged swatting attempts in which anonymous callers used bogus claims to send police to their targets’ homes, people familiar with those probes said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the probes have not been made public.

Amy Cohen, executive director of the National Association of State Election Directors, said her members warn that the Justice Department moves too slowly to create an effective deterrent.

“I recognize the complexity of federal law and the constraints imposed by the First Amendment,” she said, “but we’re talking about 18 prosecutions out of countless submissions. Those odds are not in our favor. It really does feel like there is no penalty for this kind of behavior.”

Justice Department officials say they are moving as aggressively as the law allows, noting that many groups approach the line of criminally threatening behavior without crossing it. Their language is menacing but vague in the nature of the threat and the intended target, using phrases such as “the world is a dangerous place” or “you should be careful out there.”

The agency has opened more than 100 investigations, but authorities estimated that 95 percent of the complaints reported to the task force do not merit a federal probe.

Seeking an indictment can take two years or more. In August, for example, federal prosecutors unveiled an indictment against a man accused of making death threats against state officials in Colorado and Arizona in 2021-22.

Task force chief John Dixon Keller, who works in Justice’s Public Integrity Unit, acknowledged a gap between what the public sees as dangerous and the federal government’s ability to prosecute cases. An offensive slur might feel threatening, for example, but such a message, by itself, is not usually criminally prosecutable.

“There’s never going to be a way to fill that delta in perception … That’s just a reality,” Keller said. “We’re doing our best to try to educate the election community and explain what we’re doing.”

States that have seen the highest number of threats include Colorado, Georgia and Michigan, authorities said. Eight prosecutions are linked to Arizona, including at least five in Maricopa County, a fiercely contested battleground that includes Phoenix.

In February, prosecutors charged a California man with leaving a threatening message on the personal cellphone of Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer (R), a day after the board had certified the 2022 midterm elections. “You wanna screw Americans out of true votes? We’re coming, [expletive]. You’d better [expletive] hide,” the man said, according to the federal indictment.

Richer said five people have been charged with federal or state crimes in connection to threats against him. Asked whether the Justice Department’s efforts were sufficient, he said: “I appreciate the significant amount of time that they commit to this, and I know that they’re pulled in a million different directions.”

Other Arizona officials have vented frustrations about what they say is the slow pace of federal prosecutions and the department’s general unwillingness to speak publicly about ongoing investigations.

“More publicity about the good work would be a good deterrent,” said Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (D), who for years has faced threats related to his work on elections at the county and state level.

Over the summer, Gary Restaino, the U.S. attorney for Arizona, and Myron Byrd, head of the FBI’s field office, announced plans for a local elections command post to monitor potential threats, saying jurisdictions in other states would follow suit.

The FBI also is preparing a national command center in Washington, authorities said, as it has in previous elections.

In Georgia, former state elections director Chris Harvey has been helping his successor, Blake Evans, organize training seminars with local law enforcement and election administrators to improve contingency planning. Federal officials have participated on occasion, emphasizing that they would maintain a background role.

“They’re sort of saying, ‘We’re here to support, but we can’t do a lot,’” Harvey said. “Maybe it’s helpful for election officials to hear the FBI is in the room and interested, but it’s a pretty small message. It’s not, ‘We’re here to save the day.’”

Evans said federal authorities tell local officials to pass along all threatening communications, even if they are unsure whether it is unlawful. “Even if it’s not a threat but more like harassment, they want to see that kind of stuff,” he said. “It helps them stay in tune over what the temperature is and what the environment is.”

Not all election officials have welcomed greater federal intervention.

In Macomb County, Mich., election officials have trained staff to deescalate tensions and held planning exercises with local law enforcement. County Clerk Anthony Forlini (R), who has pushed back against claims of election fraud, said greater federal involvement would heighten mistrust among residents.

“I trust my local law enforcement more than I would trust a federal agency coming in that might have an agenda,” he said.

At a recent Georgetown University seminar, Justice Department official Aaron Jennen, who serves as a security liaison to local jurisdictions, said coordination between election administrators and police departments and sheriff’s offices is essential. He cited more sophisticated planning efforts in counties that experienced a high number of threats in 2020 but expressed concerns that other jurisdictions have not taken enough precautions.

“DOJ is not 911,” Jennen told his audience. “When things happen in the heat of the moment on Election Day that require an immediate response, folks need to be in a trusted relationship with state and local law enforcement. Then, after that, we can facilitate and help out.”

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