US midterms: 'America's elections could turn really nasty'

But it was only when I questioned their belief that the 2020 election was stolen that things got tense.

People have been tossing this idea of a second American civil war around for a couple of years now, ever since the 2020 election, ever since the violence of the Capitol Riots on 6 January, 2021.

This is the first national election since the storming of the Capitol and will test whether America can hold an election without violence.

The belief that the 2020 election was stolen has seeped into the mainstream like a virus that now infects the entire democratic process.

If you felt an election had been stolen from you, you'd be angry too.

The problem is there is no evidence to support the stolen election claim.

Key Republican election officials in battleground states, like Arizona, and Georgia, also said the election process had been fair and accurate.

The impact of this conspiracy on the US voting system was made clear to me in Georgia, in the election offices of Paulding County, where public officials are gearing up for the midterms with some trepidation.

Holden doesn't tear up easily, but when she rereads the threat letter she received after the 2020 election she chokes, for just a second.

When her office in Paulding County (which by the way voted for Trump, though that really shouldn't matter) received that threat after the 2020 election, they passed it onto the FBI.

Deirdre wasn't the only election official to be targeted after that vote.

The Brennan Center for Public Justice examined the aftermath of the 2020 election and concluded that threats against both elected and unelected election officials reached unprecedented levels.

According to their findings, one in three election officials said they felt unsafe doing the job?

But we haven't seen a storming of the US Capitol before, nor so many threats to election officials, nor so much attention paid to trying to change the election rules.

Then, election rules changed in 2020 to accommodate Covid restrictions.

Election deniers say those changes, which included more early voting and more postal votes, left the system open to widespread fraud (though there's no evidence of that.).

"In 2020, political actors ramped up the lies about election processes, often on social media" the report found.

"This disinformation has indelibly changed the lives and careers of election officials." Almost 80% of election officials, according to the report, say the rise of misinformation has made their jobs more difficult.

And that's what breaks my heart," says election official Deirdre Holden.

The people who organise the voting, count the ballots and certify the results should not inject their own politics into the process.

The US is the only Western democracy where the senior election officials are not civil servants.

At the state level, it is the post of secretary of state that runs the election.

This November there are some 200 Republicans on the ballot who say they believe the 2020 election was stolen.

In at least seven states there are election deniers on the ballot who could have a direct impact on voting systems.

One of those critical posts is a state's secretary of state.

So the fact that I found myself flying over the desert in a private plane interviewing Arizona's candidate for secretary of state this summer, is a telling indication of how this midterm election is different.

In a world where election results are contested, the secretary of state suddenly becomes very important.

Watch: Katty Kay challenges Mark Finchem over his false claims the 2020 election was stolen.

Trump fully understands the significance of this post - on 2 January 2021 he famously called Georgia's Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, and urged the Republican to "find" him an extra 11,780 votes so that Trump could win the state.

Now the former president wants to make sure that he has allies in the job of secretary of state, so that if he runs in 2024, he can count on them to help him out.

In the run-up to the midterm elections, money and attention, from both parties, is pouring into the secretary of state races in half a dozen battleground states.

Finchem is a staunch election denier who believes Trump was robbed in the state and would like to overturn the 2020 result.

So, a man who says the last election was rigged and who also doesn't believe Republicans can lose the state could well end up in charge of running elections.

It won't be many voting cycles before no one trusts election results here.

Biden says Trump ideology threatens US democracy.