From delayed results to voter intimidation – 6 things that could go wrong on election night

On By Littum

U.S. election security officials have said the 2020 election was “the most secure in American history,” and a month-long analysis by the Associated Press found fewer than 475 cases of potential voter fraud in the six key battleground states — despite former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of a “rigged” result.

But the extraordinary closeness of the latest poll in the 2024 race between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris — and Trump’s continued insistence that “only way” he can lose again is if the Democrats “cheat” — meaning Election Day could be just as chaotic and confusing in 2024 as it was four years ago. Here are six important things that can go wrong on Tuesday:

According to recent studiesbattleground states Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are likely to be two of the closest in terms of final results. And in both of those states, workers aren’t allowed to start counting early ballots until Election Day.

In most states, early ballots (ie “pre-canvassed”) are opened and processed as soon as they arrive – or no later than the week before the election. That’s the main reason state officials can report their results so quickly after the polls close.

But that’s not how Pennsylvania and Wisconsin work. There, it is extremely unlikely that either Harris or Trump will jump out to the kind of immediate, clear leads that allow the media to project and ultimately declare a winner with only a small percentage of the districts reporting. So the count may continue well into the next day or even the next few days, depending on how narrow the margins are.

If that happens, the entire election could hang in the balance.

Confusion over the rules – and challenges with the results

The longer it takes to call a winner – and the closer the final result – the more chaotic things can get. Pennsylvania in particular looks problematic.

In general, states have rules for counting mail votes that apply statewide and can be used to resolve disputes. But Pennsylvania has 67 different nonpartisan county boards with different rules about which mail-in ballots they will accept, how and when they will notify voters of errors, and even whether they will allow voters to correct the mistakes they made.

This is a recipe for disaster. In it Bush v. Gore ruling after the 2000 election, the US Supreme Court rejected Florida’s use of different vote-counting standards in the same state. So if the winning margin in Pennsylvania is narrow (it was about 44,000 in 2016) and if the usual number of ballots are rejected (it was about 34,000 in 2020), local decisions about mail-in ballots will almost certainly end up in court.

Indeed, any razor-thin outcome — in Pennsylvania or elsewhere — is likely to trigger lawsuits. Since January 1, 2021, the GOP and other Trump-affiliated groups have already sued more than 50 times across the seven key battleground states. Republicans have claimed to act against voter fraud, and they have sued to purge voter rolls; strengthen signature and ID requirements; reduce the use of ballots; and requires all ballots to be counted by hand.

The party’s goal, as voting rights expert Danielle Lang of the non-partisan Campaign Legal Center recently told NBC Newsis to “create confusion and chaos” – and to use that confusion and chaos as a pretext for post-election challenges.

“A lot of this litigation is, quite frankly, not designed to succeed,” Lang explained.

Democrats have also filed lawsuits. According to NBC Newsthey have mostly focused on “expanding voting access by trying to extend registration deadlines or appealing to broader interpretations of absentee ballot and voter identification laws.”

In 2020, Trump claimed long before the election that the only way he could lose was if it was “rigged”. Then, when he lost, he continued to publicly push this lie while privately overseeing a plan to overturn his loss.

Unless Trump secures a narrow victory on election night, he will almost certainly try to do the same again. “They’re getting ready to CHEAT!” he wrote in a Sept. 23 Truth Social post. He has that at the same time repeatedly circumvented question of whether he will commit to the peaceful transfer of power.

So if Pennsylvania or another state is too close to call on Nov. 5 — and if its initial, incomplete vote count shows Trump ahead of Harris while democratically oriented postal ballots are still being processed – Trump is expected to once again declare himself the winner, regardless of what the full tally ultimately shows.

From there according to reporting from Political and otherTrump and his allies would likely lean on partisan election officials in contested states to refuse to certify the results (presumably citing the partisan lawsuits mentioned above). Since 2020, 35 of these officials have already done so did just that — even if they lack the necessary authority.

In addition to winning close races in battleground states, the former president and his allies are unlikely to get as far as they did in 2020, thanks to recently passed bipartisan laws that block efforts by bad actors to interfere the results. But only 28% of Republicans now trust the accuracy of American elections, according to Gallupdown from 55% in 2016 — so it doesn’t take much to divide and disrupt the country.

Fueled by the former president’s personal obsession with “election integrity,” the Trump campaign has allegedly recruited a network of more than 150,000 volunteer pollsters and poll workers “to go into the polls and look very carefully,” as the candidate himself recently put it.

“We need every able-bodied man and woman to join (the) army for Trump’s election security operation,” Donald Trump Jr. said. in an online video. “We need you to help us see them. Not just on Election Day, but during early voting and at the counting boards. President Trump is going to win. Don’t let them steal it.”

The worry among voting rights advocates, election officials and Democrats is that if such an “army” does indeed emerge outside or inside polling places, legal observation could turn into illegal intimidation — which could deter or discourage people from voting.

Even violence is a possibility, including confrontations that close polling stations or ballot counting facilities. According to to the New York Times“federal officials have not released data on the amount of violent threats and incidents of intimidation reported by local governments, but experts say it has increased significantly since the summer.”

Just last week, the Justice Department unsealed a complaint against a Philadelphia man who had vowed to skin alive and kill a party official who was recruiting volunteer pollsters. Police in Tempe, Arizona, arrested a man in connection with shootings at a Democratic campaign office. Prosecutors charged a 61-year-old man from Tampa, Fla., of threatening an election official. ONE blue US Postal Service mailbox in Phoenix was set on fire and damaged about 20 ballots. (The suspect admitted to committing the arson, but claimed his actions were unrelated to the election.) And on Monday, there were also drop boxes in Oregon with hundreds of ballots. the attack of arson.

This year, 98% of voters – including every single voter in the battleground states – will cast a paper ballot. So the chance of electronic vote manipulation is minimal. But a cyber attack could still affect, for example, the election night reporting system that media rely on. And “foreign disinformation about poll reliability is even more prevalent in 2024 than it has been in the past several election cycles,” according to Timewhere Russia, China and Iran are acting online to further divide Americans over the election results. They “make us hate each other so much that internally we tear ourselves apart or we make enemies out of ourselves,” Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes told the magazine.

Hurricane Helene has already upended elections in North Carolina, where the General Assembly unanimously passed special post-disaster voting rules to make it easier for 1.3 million registered voters in 25 storm-ravaged counties to vote in person and by mail. Any new weather situation has the potential to close polling stations or disrupt turnout.