The Coming Election Battles

There are some big clashes coming in November, both before and after Election Day.

Donald Trump and his allies have spent years sowing doubts about the integrity of American elections. They’ve falsely claimed, including through lawsuits, that voter rolls are full of ineligible voters and that mail ballots are often improperly counted. They’ve installed sympathetic officials at the state and local level who are ready to act on these accusations. They have hundreds of lawyers on standby.

At the same time, Democrats and voting rights organizations are preparing to counter such efforts. They’ve revamped a nationwide voter protection team and built a legal army of their own.

Polls suggest the presidential contest will be close. In every state where the margin is small, both sides expect a post-election battle over the outcome. (Since 2020, local officials in eight states have refused to certify various results.) The maelstrom could endanger the swift outcome that many voters expect.

I’ve spent years reporting on the gathering storm. In today’s newsletter, I’ll describe what it could look like.

The challenges

American elections don’t all look the same. Each state runs its own election, meaning that each state will likely face its own unique set of legal challenges in November. Mail ballots have emerged as targets in Pennsylvania and Nevada. The manual that governs elections in Arizona faces multiple lawsuits. Republicans say the voter rolls in several states, including Michigan, are improperly maintained. Controversies could arise in any of those places.

But the likeliest source of trouble at the moment is Georgia, which embodies Republicans’ two-pronged approach: They’ve set up new hurdles to voting and a process to stall — or even outright avoid — certifying the results if Trump loses. (In certification, local election officials are like scorekeepers at a football game, tallying up the points from each quarter to make a final, official score.)