The countdown to Election Day is on

But the results might not come down to the vote count

Photo by Tabrez Syed on Unsplash

As of Friday, 36.1 million voters have already cast their ballots. To put this into context, 158 million people voted in 2020. All the polls seem to be showing that the race is nail-bitingly tight. But which candidate “wins” might not come down to vote tallies. It could come down to election manipulation, bullying, and even cheating. Team Trump and the GOP are hard at work trying to skew the results in a variety of ways.

Bear in mind that, while the howls of election fraud are coming exclusively from the right, the only meaningful fraud that occurred in 2020 was done by Republicans for the benefit of Donald Trump—not the other way around.

In August, an ex-county clerk in Colorado—a Republican—was found guilty of seven criminal counts, including tampering with voting machines. Security footage also showed a Coffee County, Georgia, Republican election official present during breach of voting equipment in 2020.

Hear that again: Evidence shows that Trump supporters tampered with actual voting machines in two states in 2020. Lawyers Jenna Ellis, Sidney Powell, Kenneth Chesebro, and a bail bondsman named Scott Hall all entered guilty pleas in the Georgia racketeering case. Donald Trump remains under indictment in Washington, D.C., for multiple criminal conspiracies.

This we know. We just aren’t hearing about it. All we hear are lies, lies, lies about election fraud on the left, and that the GOP is committed to saving our elections from the fraudsters.

In his three-hour podcast interview with Joe Rogan, Trump dug into the Big Lie again. He has also threatened to prosecute lawyers, voters, and election officials who he claims “cheated” in the 2024 election. A significant component of the 2024 Big Lie is the claim of widespread non-citizen voting, which is already illegal across the country. Four years have passed, yet Democrats have not made a dent in debunking this narrative.

Nor have they really tried to emphasize the actual truth: That the cheating and criminal activity around elections is coming from the accusers, not the accused.

Here’s how the Republican Party is trying to game the system this round in three phases: pre-election, Election Day, and post-election.

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I broke things down for The Bulwark

What’s happening with pre-election Republican shenanigans thus far?

Trump’s campaign has been feeding his supporters constant lies about election integrity and widespread “illegal immigrant” voting, setting the stage for the same false narrative of a “rigged” election that we saw in 2020 if Kamala Harris wins. The theme will likely fire up MAGA anger, national chaos, and even violence.

But there’s more.

Mass Voter Challenges

This election season, the favored tactic has been encouraging voters to file “mass voter challenges,” in which individual voters call other voters’ eligibility into question, usually in large numbers at once. As I have explained, the mass voter challenges are motivated by a string of false claims, such as dead people casting ballots, non-citizens filling up the voter rolls, and people registering in states where they don’t live.