Merloe is a member of the Election Reformers Network Advisory Council and provides strategic advice on democracy and elections in the U.S. and internationally.
Political trench warfare is in full swing as the 2024 pre-election period draws to a close. And the signs are clear that battles will heat up all the way to Nov. 5 — and beyond — over voter qualification, voting, canvassing, certification of results and the allocation of Electoral College votes. With such a close election, both sides know that gaining inches can make a decisive difference, and they are skirmishing accordingly.
MAGA forces are seeking to narrow voting opportunities and undermine confidence in elections, while claiming to protect electoral integrity. Others are defending voting rights and buttressing confidence in election procedures. The intensity of the ground and air battles may well surpass prior elections and could stretch right up to Jan. 6, 2025. Plus, officials are cautioning that patience will be needed as vote counts are completed and disinformation swirls in the air.
Understanding impending electoral developments, including in the likely volatile period following Election Day, will be challenging. The Election Overtime Project, sponsored by four leading entities, provides valuable materials that demystify key procedures in seven critical states. The National Task Force on Election Crises posts resources, including a dashboard of issues and incidents, that help to decipher developments. Considering how judges can head off election emergencies is also useful.
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The judicial front is critical
The courts are a central arena for political trench warfare — both to settle significant, contentious issues and to fend off attempts to launder bogus charges used to deny the legitimacy of 2024 losses. According to Democracy Docket more than 200 lawsuits related to voting rights have been filed since January 2023, with 34 lodged in September — almost three times the number in the same period of 2020 — and an even greater number is expected this month.
The devastation brought by Hurricane Helene in North Carolina and elsewhere will impact early and Election Day voting, while steps taken to mitigate the effects are likely to generate court challenges and are spawning political conspiracy theories. Legal battles are already taking place over issues like the possible disqualification of 225,000 North Carolina voters. Republican Party lawyers also challenged University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill students’ and employees’ use of digital IDs for voting purposes and, on Oct. 2, they filed a case seeking to overturn the state’s overseas and military voters law.
The numerous suits in Pennsylvania are also granular. In Montgomery County, the state’s third most populous jurisdiction, Republicans are trying to prevent the mailing of ballots, and they are fighting to remove ballot drop boxes in Luzerne County. Another legal battle is taking place over concerns whether deficiencies in hand dating the outer envelopes of ballots returned by mail disqualifies them and whether such voters should then be notified so they might cure their problem or cast a provisional ballot at their polling station.
The Supreme Court may take up the mailed ballot disqualification issue, which has been the subject of a dozen state and federal cases.
Multiple court fights are also underway in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Wisconsin and elsewhere. Keeping up with such cases is a challenge itself, though the Election Law Blog,Daily Docket and the Election Reformers Network daily news clippings are among the reliable resources of information on contests over rules issued and court actions.
Troubling 11th-hour rule changes by Georgia’s Election Board are generating considerable attention, and other states are facing significant rule changes as well. It is generally understood that changing rules too close to Election Day is unfair to the contestants, confusing to voters and increases potentials for errors by election officials.
Nonetheless, rule changes and litigation continue even though early and mail voting has commenced in many states. Those developments will undoubtedly become fodder for disinformation barrages.
Information manipulation and foreign interference subverts elections
The freedom to develop and hold opinions without interference and the right to seek, receive and impart trustworthy information in doing so are essential to making free electoral choices. Yet, there is an unprecedented bombardment of misinformation and disinformation on digital platforms and traditional media airwaves launched by domestic and foreign actors.
No single line of disinformation has subverted electoral trust more than the Big Lie campaign, which falsely claims — on a daily basis — that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. The lie is being augmented in several ways by former President Donald Trump and others to discredit Vice President Kamala Harris’ potential win, including through false claims that early voting is used for fraud, mailed-in ballots are largely fraudulent and that he won Minnesota in 2020 (where he lost by 7 percentage points).
Importantly, the Big Lie includes bogus claims that non-citizens have been illegally voting in massive numbers and that the Biden administration is encouraging an influx of undocumented immigrants so they can tip the election. MAGA efforts to pass unnecessary federal legislation and referendums in eight states illegalizing noncitizen voting dovetails with MAGA demands to purge voter rolls. That lie is linked to broader MAGA misinformation concerning the flow of immigrants into the country and the vilification of them as the source of crime, housing shortages and other ills.
Such lies corrupt voters’ decision making and exacerbate social divisions, creating opportunities for domestic and foreign adversaries of democracy.
Russia, China and Iran are among the foreign actors seeking to interfere in the 2024 elections to favor antidemocratic campaigns, undermine trust in elections and destabilize the country by driving social divisions. Their tactics have evolved from past elections, becoming more sophisticated in spreading disinformation and potentially disrupting election procedures — though election officials have improved their means of blocking hacking attempts, and federal agencies are stepping up to counter foreign electoral interventions.
The Associated Press, CBS, BBC, Reuters, and others are launching a oint initiative to help each other counter disinformation in the election. The Brennan Center for Justice offers materials to identify AI-generated fakes and other disinformation that will continue to challenge users as social media platforms provide insufficient safeguards and federal agencies retreat from engaging the platforms around election disinformation.
While groups have advocated for stronger measures, identifying trusted information resources will be crucial. Local trusted networks will also be needed to address possible disruptions of election processes and deescalate potentials for political violence.
Certification refusals, disruptions and potentials for violence are real
MAGA election deniers joined election bodies in battleground states and elsewhere, reportedly gaining the majority in 14 counties including six in Pennsylvania and the Georgia State Election Board. That creates a potential for election boards to delay or refuse to certify election results, which could trigger disruptions in states determining Electoral College slates and outcomes of down-ballot races, including for the House and Senate. Safeguards are in place to force board members to complete their non-discretionary duties to certify, though they can take time and there is a risk of refusals to honor court orders as MAGA forces spread information disorder and spike post-election tensions.
Given the levels of harassment and threats against election officials, increasing physical security of electoral facilities is now part of their preparations. In a not far-fetched scenario, isolated administrative problems that are typical in elections may become fodder for weaponized disinformation by election deniers, while battles over results certification could take place. Such developments risk erupting into attacks on election facilities or officials. A recent survey showed that more than 25 percent of MAGA supporters condone using violence if they believe that the election is being rigged, and many of them think that rigging is already taking place.
The public needs to demand the rejection of such tactics and Trump’s call to fight like hell to keep or take power even if you lose an election. Seeking to corrode public confidence in elections and condoning political violence connotes an authoritarian agenda. These threats confirm that democracy is on the ballot. Plus, safeguarding universal suffrage without fear and defending the people’s electoral choices are part of our common democratic challenge.
How we meet this challenge will likely reverberate widely, and for years to come.
