There’s a certain adrenaline rush that comes with working in the area of election law in the period before presidential elections. That’s especially true if, like me, you do a lot of public speaking and media. It’s great to be able to help educate the public and be part of the conversation on our democratic practices and challenges.
Although the overwhelming emotion I have felt before election days in the past is exhaustion, in the last the last few cycles that emotion has been stress and anxiety. Each day I spend much of my days and evenings reading and writing about threats to democracy and fair elections. It’s the work of the Safeguarding Democracy Project and its my passion for voters’ rights. And I have been profoundly worried not only about deterioration of voting rights for some voters in the U.S. but also the keen risks of election subversion which emerged in 2020. Sometimes it is hard to take.
Those of us in the field have long joked about the Election Administrator’s prayer: Lord, let this election not be close. But it’s especially true this time, with one of the candidates constantly spreading false claims of stolen or rigged elections, and convincing millions of his followers that the last election was stolen and the upcoming one will be too, unless he wins. It’s a recipe for political instability and potentially even violence.
There are three possible outcomes on Tuesday night: a blowout for one of the candidates, a Bush v. Gore-type extremely close election that will come down to trench warfare between the parties that lasts for weeks, and a pattern like 2020, where it takes a few days to determine the winner and the race is called by next weekend.
it’s already baked into our thinking that Donald Trump will not concede defeat no matter what happens: that, itself, is astounding, as is the fact that millions of people would believe him despite the evidence to the contrary. It shows how in the current era of cheap speech it is so much easier to undermine peoples’ confidence in free and fair elections even though election administrators generally do an honest, competent, and heroic job in running our elections.
If the election is a blowout in Trump’s favor or if he narrowly ekes out a win, I suspect we won’t hear much about stolen elections for a while. Democrats may protest, but they won’t try to block Trump’s return to power. The question will then be about free and fair elections in 2026 and 2028.
If we are in a Bush v. Gore scenario, it will be much uglier than in 2000, with all kinds of election disinformation flying, supercharged not only by Trump but by Elon Musk, through his PAC and social media platform. The good news is that the chances of this happening are very small. It would have to come down to a few hundred or maybe a few thousand votes in a swing state essential to the outcome of the election.
If Harris ekes out a win following a blue shift in Pennsylvania, with the results not announced until late in the week, it will be ugly too. And then the question will be if Trump will try a litigation and political strategy, as he did in 2020 to try to overturn the results. If he does, he will almost certainly not succeed. But it will cause more civil strife and undermining of confidence in American elections.
If Harris wins in a convincing electoral college vote that can be declared by AP and the networks by Wednesday, then Trump’s attempt to try to victory and build legal and political momentum will be much more likely to fail.
I don’t know what the next week will bring, but for the sake of the country, I hope that most Americans won’t have to think about the intricacies of election law and how our peaceful transitions of power work for some time.