CNN — Early voters dropping off ballots in Berks County, Pennsylvania, are confronted by a sight surprising for elections in the United States:  A pair of uniformed sheriff’s deputies armed with guns and tasers guarding the ballot box.  

Directed by local election officials to question voters before letting them deposit their ballots, the deputies guarding the drop boxes underscore the growing schism in this country over the debunked claims that the 2020 election was marred by rampant vote fraud.  

To some in Berks County, the deputies are only trying to ensure a fair and clean election. Others say their presence and direct questioning risks intimidating voters and stoking baseless conspiracy theories.

Having deputies at drop boxes “can obviously be very intimidating in the moment to those voters,” said Mary McCord, executive director of the nonpartisan Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown University Law Center. But it also “sends this broader message that our elections aren’t secure, that there’s widespread fraud … and what’s really abhorrent about this is, it’s based on a lie, it’s based on disinformation.” 

The scene playing out in Berks County may be one of the more visible examples of law-enforcement intervention in the 2022 voting process. But there are others, and many of those efforts are tied to a fringe group of elected sheriffs influenced by former President Donald Trump’s repeatedly disproven claims of vote fraud. Those sheriffs have been telling their constituents they plan to police the midterm elections – even though that is normally the duty of election officials.