Politico | A day-by-day guide of what could happen if this US election goes bad
- Election experts game out the chaos that could unfold in the minutes, hours and days after the last ballot is cast
- Americans have little experience navigating disputed elections at this scale
This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Garrett M. Graff on politico.com on October 23, 2020.
The coronavirus pandemic was always going to make the 2020 election uniquely complicated, and Donald Trump’s norm-busting style was always going to make it tense, but headlines in recent days have started to read like political thriller plot lines. We’ve seen Iranian skulduggery, dummy ballot boxes and mysterious threatening emails. Congressional Democrats are pleading with the military to respect a peaceful transition of power. A poll shows that barely a fifth of Americans believe this year’s election will be “free and fair.” There’s concern about violence, especially by militias and white supremacists. Some Americans are even laying in extra food and water, fearing what comes next.
Americans have little experience navigating disputed elections at this scale, and none at all doing so with a president hinting he might not leave office if he loses.
So what could we really be in for after November 3? Beyond a vague, crippling sense of dread, a feeling informed by hours of late-night doom-scrolling, what could actually go wrong?
The closer we get to the election, the more the picture comes into focus. Three months ago, POLITICO Magazine surveyed experts about what could go wrong on Election Day itself – from voter suppression to sinister “poll-watchers” to complete voting chaos – and as the day approaches we asked more than a dozen election, constitutional and national security experts about the concrete problems they’re planning for once the polls close.
Some have already been involved in “wargaming” scenarios for a bitterly contested election; others have been busy gathering legal memos to plan for this contingency or that or enlisting corps of lawyers and observers to deploy on Election Day and to any trouble spots in the days that follow. Their fears run from a narrow election night Trump lead in Arizona to a reprise of the 2000 “Brooks Brothers riot” – this time with AR-15 rifles – to the outsize importance that might weigh on Montana’s sole congressional race if the presidential race ends up in the House of Representatives.
