Black women running for office are finally speaking out after recent data revealed the alarming amount of online harassment they receive.

A study from the Center for Democracy and Technology revealed that Black candidates are over four times more likely to be targeted with "violent abuse" than their white counterparts. Women of color are five times more likely. In terms of misinformation, Black candidates are targeted twice as often.

Research director at CDT Dhanaraj Thakur told The Washington Post that this abuse is part of the reason government institutions continue to uphold the “unrepresentative status quo.”

“A lack of representation means that we lose the important insights and solutions to public policy problems that women of color will bring,” he said. “We all suffer if everyone does not have a seat at the table.”

As the November midterms approach, caucuses across the U.S. are seeing a record-breaking number of Black candidates running for Senate and governor. Unfortunately, the data surrounding their treatment online is limited.

While the CDT surveyed just 100,000 tweets from 300 randomly selected candidates ahead of the 2020 elections, they found that the majority of the harassment targeting women of color directly involved sexism, racism or promotion of violence.

Kentucky state Representative Attica Scott shared with The Post that after she announced her bid for Congress, she received an onslaught of hateful messages.

“The threat I received was to immediately try to shut me down, try to stop me before I even got started with the campaign," she said. "It’s designed to have that chilling effect, that silencing effect.”

Scott added that even after she lost the Democratic primary earlier this year, the harassment has continued. The messages rarely, if ever, address her platform.

“It’s hardly ever about policy. It’s almost always about me being a Black woman," she said.

Unfortunately, law enforcement typically lacks the resources to investigate online threats, especially when made anonymously. The CDT recommends that social media platforms implement updated policies against harassment, particularly ones around election officials and campaigns.

While many platform's terms of services already include provisions against abusive language and threatening violence, companies often unequally enforce them. With billionaire Elon Musk recently obtaining ownership of social media site Twitter, experts say that his lax policies on hate speech are likely to make matters worse. In fact, since his purchase, use of the n-word on the platform has increased by 500 percent.

Because of this, Scott believes many women have been discouraged from running for office. She warned that attacks on women of color are a “serious attack on our democracy.”

She said: “When we allow this to happen to women of color, we are saying we’re are willing to allow our democracy to burn."