AMNA NAWAZ: The Department of Justice is threatening top election officials in more than a dozen states with arrest if even a single vote is cast in their states by a noncitizen.

The threats detailed in a letter stating it's illegal for noncitizens to vote and giving elections officials five days to detail how they will comply with federal law.

It's worth noting that noncitizens voting, as well as election fraud in general, is exceedingly rare in this country, with just a handful of reported cases, even in databases kept by conservative legal groups.

The letter was obtained by Votebeat.

Its editorial director, Jessica Huseman, she joins us now.

So, Jessica, which states exactly received this letter and what exactly is the DOJ asking for here?

JESSICA HUSEMAN, Editorial Director, Votebeat: All of the states got the letter, which that was not initially obvious when this was reported for the first time.

We heard from several states all at once that had gotten it.

There were several states that couldn't actually find the letter because the Trump administration sent it to things like info@secretaryofstate.gov for some of these Web sites.

So they had to go hunt it down.

But, yes, all 50 states have gotten them.

And the letter essentially reminds election administrators that noncitizen voting is illegal and says that there are criminal penalties associated with knowingly allowing a noncitizen to vote.

Of course, that is not new information to election officials.

And all of the election officials that I spoke to about this yesterday didn't seem particularly concerned.

AMNA NAWAZ: So is noncitizen voting something the election officials are worried about in the states you talk to?

And how worried are they that there could be some kind of criminal penalties if they don't comply with this DOJ demand?

JESSICA HUSEMAN: You know, I think that states are genuinely not concerned about noncitizen voting.

As you said in the run-up, it is exceedingly rare.

It very rarely happens.

Election administrators, especially in the last couple of years, as the Trump administration has made this sort of their preferred election issue to talk about it, have done things like done huge reviews of their entire state's voter rolls.

Georgia just completed that a few months ago.

And they did find a few, right?

That happens.

This is a human-run system.

But it's really, really small numbers, and I think the suggestion that election administrators are knowingly allowing people who are not qualified to vote to cast a ballot stretches the imagination.

I have been covering this a long time.

I haven't met an election administrator that I think would knowingly violate the law.

AMNA NAWAZ: And yet there is this threat of potential arrest that's in this letter.

We have also seen the administration threaten to, for example, withhold anti-terrorism funding if states didn't comply with the president's election agenda, like requiring paper ballots or citizenship checks.

So are states looking at that as empty threats or a pressure campaign of a different kind?

JESSICA HUSEMAN: You know, I think that they're kind of looking at it as both, right?

I think that this is a definite and defined pressure campaign.

As you say, there are threats of funding.

There are threats of criminal penalties.

There are lawsuits in a number of states.

But I think that election administrators who have to wake up every morning and make the elections happen are looking at the practical reality of this.

If you look at the way that Trump and the DOJ have or have not succeeded in these court battles, the election administrators have a point, right?

They have been screaming at them for a couple of years now, and certainly they did this in the first Trump administration as well.

But almost nothing that they do ultimately has real-world consequences, because they approach it in such bizarre and extralegal ways.

AMNA NAWAZ: Related to what you're noting here, we should point out and underscore that, just yesterday, there was a federal judge who blocked the DOJ demand for personal information of everyone who worked in the Fulton County, Georgia, election office.

But if you step back, Jessica, and, look, as you mentioned, this is a human-run system, and it's not one system, right?

There are 50 different systems relying on thousands of local jurisdictions.

When you look at the various ways that pressure or threats have been applied or deployed, is there a broader impact on the way elections are run when you look at the people who we depend on to run it?

JESSICA HUSEMAN: Absolutely.

I think that really these people are exhausted.

They are having to do things that are not part of their normal jobs and are expressly not helpful to voters.

Demanding that they do these kind of reviews in the run-up to an election that is already under way, when the problem they're trying to find does not exist, is simply not a good use of time for election -- for America's election administrators, especially when we have got an election that's basically under way.

There are primaries happening now.

November is basically tomorrow in many of these people's minds.

And so all of the added pressures are taking away from the space and time that they have to dedicate to what their actual job is, which is making sure that everyone who walks in the door to vote is handed a ballot and that ballot is counted accurately.

That's a huge job, and all of these responsibilities are really starting to add up.

And we're seeing huge burnout and quite a lot of turnover.

AMNA NAWAZ: All right, we will see what kind of impact this has on the upcoming midterm elections.

And, meanwhile, that is the editorial director of Votebeat, Jessica Huseman, joining us tonight.

Jessica, thank you so much.

JESSICA HUSEMAN: Thank you.