Letters stuffed with white powder have been mailed to election offices in at least six states, as officials brace for threats and possible violence in the final week before the midterms.

The FBI and US Postal Inspection Service told the Daily Mail that they are continuing to investigate up to 100 suspicious mailings sent to election administrators this month. 

The news has put state and local officials increasingly on edge in the run-up to Election Day as millions of Americans stream to polling places across the country and prepare to cast their ballots. 

It's unclear who is to blame for the suspicious mailings. 

Some election officials have cited the incendiary rhetoric President Donald Trump, warning that his repeated claims of voter fraud could expose people to additional threats. 

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes blamed Trump for 'ginning up' divisiveness ahead of the midterms, describing the president's actions in a CNN interview as 'wholly and completely irresponsible.'

'Unfortunately, the president has a very broad reach and his audience takes him very seriously,' Fontes said. 'I have personally had colleagues who had their dogs poisoned,' he added. 'My own family has been threatened. I have been threatened.'

The White House has defended its election-related actions as necessary to prevent voter fraud and enforce federal election laws.

'No one has done more than President Trump to ensure America has free and fair elections,' Lauren Bis, a White House spokeswoman, told the Daily Mail. 

The threats, meanwhile, have continued. More than 100 letters were sent to state and local election sites in October, law enforcement officials said, and officials in Louisiana, Ohio, and Oklahoma all reported being targeted. 

In Louisiana, one state employee was taken to the hospital as a precaution after opening the letter, and the building was evacuated. 

More than three dozen congressional offices have been targeted by letters in recent weeks containing a white powdery substance. 

At least 10 people were exposed to white powder sent to the New York offices of Democrats Hakeem Jeffries, Ritchie Torres and Tom Suozzi, local outlets reported earlier this month. 

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, California Democratic Senator Alex Padilla, Republican Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota and Ted Cruz in Texas have also appeared to be targeted with mailings, according to ABC News and Axios. 

The threats have left state and local election officials scrambling to train their staff to prepare and respond to a growing list of threats.

Many have been working with groups like the nonpartisan Committee for Safe and Secure Elections (CSSE), comprised of current and former election officials and law enforcement personnel that conducts security trainings for state and local election staff.

Tina Barton, the co-chair of the group, told the Daily Mail she has led more than 140 security trainings for state and local election staff in the run-up to the November 3 elections - a sharp increase from 2024, when she led around 67.  

Demand, she said in an interview, has 'substantially increased' in the past two years - due to the rise of new, sophisticated technologies, as well as an awareness from the law enforcement community that these threats 'aren't going away.' 

The group briefs sheriffs offices, election workers, and police departments on emerging threats, deescalation techniques, and other safety measures. 

They also run 'tabletop exercises' to prepare for responding to bomb threats, suspicious packages, swatting and disruption from possible drone use. 

Despite their local roles, these individuals receive an outsize amount of harassment and threats - a Brennan Center study conducted this year found that 32 percent of election officials said they have been 'threatened, harassed, or abused' for doing their job.

Barton, a former Republican city clerk in Michigan, has experienced this harassment first-hand. 'I had my life threatened in 2020,' she told the Daily Mail, referring to a man who called her and vowed to kill her and her family in deeply explicit terms. 

The individual, Andrew Nickels, of Carmel, Indiana, was charged with making interstate threats to an election worker, and was sentenced to more than a year in prison in 2023.

Now, she's hoping to protect other election officials from experiencing the same. 

Barton said politicians with a following must choose their words carefully.

'Every action they take evolves into a reaction by people who believe them and trust them,' she said. 'We all have a responsibility when we know we have authority.' 

Faith in the system is incredibly fragile: Just six in ten Americans say they would trust the election results, according to a new ABC News/Ipsos poll. 

A PBS News/Marist survey earlier this month found that 30 percent of voters believe violence might be necessary to get the country back on track.

Some states have moved to beef up security at polling locations in response, and embrace a bevy of unique solutions to protect election workers this November.

Some counties in Georgia and Nevada have issued ‘panic buttons’ at polling locations, which that transmit GPS coordinates and photographs directly to the local sheriff’s offices and emergency dispatchers in the event they are pressed.

In Los Angeles County, election workers have teamed up with bomb-sniffing canine teams to screen incoming mail.

And in Durham County, North Carolina, polling sites are now equipped with bulletproof glass, security cameras, and state-of-the-art mail ventilation rooms - including a separate exhaust system to contain potentially hazardous substances.

The flurry of threats comes as the president has pushed for greater federal control over elections during his second term.

He signed two executive orders seeking to regulate states’ use of mail-in ballots, an effort blocked last month by the Supreme Court - and has repeatedly claimed that noncitizens are voting illegally, despite studies that show such cases are extremely rare.

Last week the Justice Department sued California after the state refused to purge 20,000 suspected noncitizens from its voter rolls. 

In a separate case, a federal judge blocked the Department of Homeland Security from examining voter rolls in nine states under its ‘Unlawful Voting Initiative’. The department is likely to appeal.

Marc Elias, a Democratic lawyer and founder of Democracy Docket, argued that the fear-mongering is a far greater threat to elections than any instances of voter fraud itself.

‘In a nation of 340 million Americans, where you have hundreds of millions of voters voting in each election, a couple of voters or a dozen voters who vote illegally is not changing the outcome of anything,’ he said.

Barton, the CSSE co-chair, said the unfortunate reality is that much of the hostility fomented by politicians often impacts state and local election officials.

‘Unfortunately, some of that rhetoric has been targeted at the election community and the election processes,’ Barton said. ‘And the average election worker is the one that ends up bearing the brunt of this.’