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

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

Slow counting in key states

According to the latest surveys, the battleground states of Pennsylvania and Wisconsin will likely be closest in final results. And in both states, workers are not allowed to start counting early ballots until Election Day.

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

But that’s not how Pennsylvania and Wisconsin work. There, it is extremely unlikely that Harris or Trump will take the kind of immediate, clear lead that allows the media to project and ultimately declare the winner with only a small percentage of precincts reporting. So the counting could 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 be at stake.

Confusion about the rules – and challenges to results

The longer it takes to declare a winner – and the closer the final outcome is – the more chaotic things can become. Pennsylvania in particular looks problematic.

Generally, states have state-wide ballot counting rules that can be used to resolve disputes. But Pennsylvania has 67 different partisan county boards with different rules about which ballots they accept, how and when they notify voters of errors, and even whether they allow voters to fix the mistakes they made.

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

In fact, any razor-thin outcome – in Pennsylvania or elsewhere – will likely lead to lawsuits. Since January 1, 2021, the Republican Party and other Trump-affiliated groups have filed lawsuits more than 50 times in the seven major battleground states. Republicans claim to be cracking down on voter fraud and have filed a lawsuit to purge the voter rolls; strengthen signature and ID requirements; reduce the use of ballot boxes; and require all ballots to be counted by hand.

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

“Many of these lawsuits, quite frankly, are not intended to succeed,” Lang explains.

Democrats have also filed lawsuits. According to NBC News, they have focused primarily on “expanding voting access by trying to extend registration deadlines or by invoking broader interpretations of laws about absentee ballots and voter identification.”

The Trump factor

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

Unless Trump wins a definitive victory on election night, he will almost certainly try to do the same thing again. “They’re getting ready to cheat!” he wrote in a September 23 Truth Social post. At the same time, he has repeatedly sidestepped questions about whether he will commit to a peaceful transfer of power.

So if Pennsylvania or another state is too close to visit on Nov. 5 — and if the initial, incomplete vote count shows Trump ahead of Harris while the Democratic-leaning ballots are still pending — Trump is expected to he will declare himself the winner again, regardless of what the full count ultimately shows.

From there, according to reporting from Politico and others, Trump and his allies would likely lean on partisan election officials in disputed states to refuse to certify the results (presumably by citing the partisan lawsuits mentioned above). As of 2020, 35 of these battleground officials have already done so – even though they lack the necessary authority.

If the former president and his allies don’t prevail in close races in battleground states, it’s unlikely they’ll get as far as they did in 2020, thanks to recently passed bipartisan laws blocking bad actors’ attempts to meddle in the results. But according to Gallup, only 28% of Republicans now have confidence in the accuracy of US elections, down from 55% in 2016 – so it won’t take much to divide and disrupt the country.

Violence or intimidation at polling stations

Driven by the former president’s personal obsession with “election integrity,” the Trump campaign has reportedly recruited a network of more than 150,000 volunteer poll watchers and poll watchers “to go to the polls and watch very carefully,” as the candidate himself recently said. .

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

The concern among voting rights advocates, election officials and Democrats is that if such an “army” manifests outside or inside polling places, legal surveillance could turn into illegal intimidation – which could discourage or deter people from voting.

Even violence is a possibility, including confrontations that close down polling stations or polling places. According to the New York Times, “Federal officials have not released data on the extent of violent threats and intimidation incidents reported by local governments, but experts say they have increased significantly since the summer.”

Last week alone, the Justice Department unsealed a complaint against a Philadelphia man who vowed to skin alive and kill a party official who was recruiting volunteer poll workers. Police in Tempe, Arizona, have arrested a man in connection with shootings at a Democratic campaign office. Prosecutors have charged a 61-year-old man from Tampa, Florida, with threatening an election official. A blue U.S. Postal Service mailbox in Phoenix was set on fire, damaging about 20 ballots. (The suspect admitted to arson, but claimed his actions were not related to the election.) And on Monday, mailboxes in Oregon containing hundreds of ballots were also targeted in arson.

Cyber ​​attacks

This year, 98% of voters – including every voter in battleground states – will cast paper ballots. The chance of electronic manipulation of the votes is therefore minuscule. But a cyberattack could still impact, for example, the election night reporting system the media relies on. And “foreign disinformation about the reliability of the election is even more widespread in 2024 than in past election cycles,” according to Time, with Russia, China and Iran acting online to further divide Americans over the election results. They “make us hate each other so much that we tear ourselves apart internally or we make enemies of ourselves,” Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes told the magazine.

Bad weather

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