| Next week’s election will be free and fair, and the presidential candidate Americans choose will be sworn in, election officials and experts say — but it may be a rocky, even violent road to get there. Four years after Donald Trump and his allies tried to overturn his election loss, the former president and his allies are signaling they will try again if he loses this time. Experts believe that the democratic system will hold, but they warn it could be tested severely. “Our election system is under pressure of a kind we have not seen before,” said Michael Waldman, the president of the Brennan Center for Justice, an advocacy group for voting rights. “In 2020, the election deniers were improvisational. Now that same election-denier impulse is far more organized, far more strategic and far better funded.” All this week in The 5-Minute Fix, we’ll explore election integrity and your questions around it: How will my vote be protected? What could election deniers do to interfere with the vote count? Could the legitimate results be overturned? Is there a conflict of interest if Vice President Kamala Harris ends up having to certify the election result? And what exactly did Trump do in 2020 that was so dangerous to democracy, and how could he do it again? Send me your questions. Today: How Trump created the perception of widespread voter fraud to wage war on the 2020 results, and how he could do it again in 2024. Trump’s election falsehoods were the first, vital step In the federal criminal case alleging that Trump conspired to overturn the 2020 election results, special counsel Jack Smith points to Trump’s false claims that he won the election as the first step to try to stay in power. “Despite having lost, the Defendant — who was also the incumbent President — was determined to remain in power,” Smith wrote in the indictment. “So, for more than two months following election day on November 3, 2020, the Defendant spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won.” Trump had no reason to say this, especially repeatedly: Voting fraud is rare; voting machines are a safe and reliable way to tabulate votes; and Smith details how Trump was allegedly told numerous times by his allies and staff that the election was legitimate. Crucially for 2024, his narrative stuck. Years after the 2020 election, polls show that a majority of Republicans think or suspect that President Joe Biden didn’t legitimately win. A survey from the nonpartisan World Justice Project finds that nearly half of Republicans say they won’t accept the results of the 2024 election if their candidate loses — and 14 percent would “take action to overturn” the election if Trump were defeated. Trump and his allies brought those baseless claims to court After falsely claiming there was election fraud over and over, Trump and a coterie of lawyers filed dozens of lawsuits in battleground states questioning the results. Those claims were baseless, though, and were quickly tossed out by the courts — including by Trump-appointed judges. As one Republican judge in Pennsylvania put it, the Trump campaign had asked the court to “disenfranchise almost 7 million voters.” The lawsuit was thrown out. Trump’s allies have faced serious consequences for spreading falsehoods about the 2020 votes. Lawyer Rudy Giuliani is facing criminal indictments and disbarment, and is turning over his home and possessions to pay for a $148 million defamation judgment awarded to two election workers in Georgia whom he falsely accused of election fraud. Last year, lawyer Jenna Ellis tearfully pleaded guilty to charges related to election interference in Georgia, and her law license was suspended: “If I knew then what I know now, I would have declined to represent Donald Trump in these post-election challenges,” she said. Trump raising baseless doubts about voting fraud in 2024, too False election fraud claims “have been underway almost unceasingly since 2020,” said Jessica Marsden, who oversees the group Protect Democracy’s work to ensure free and fair elections. “Pretend it’s close,” Trump said at a rally Friday in Las Vegas, asserting that he’s “leading by a lot” in swing states though public polls show it’s a dead heat. “Everybody has to.” This time, he is specifically pushing a false narrative that noncitizens will cast ballots. Research shows it is extremely rare for noncitizens to vote. But this message ties in with the Trump’s campaign’s at-times racist accusations that immigrants are a danger to the country. A deluge of new lawsuits is coming as well For months now, Republicans have filed dozens of lawsuits trying to challenge how ballots get counted, attempting to remove some voters from the rolls and sometimes — without evidence — claiming that noncitizens are on the voter rolls. Some Trump allies talked about searching for voters with “ethnic names” to challenge state voter rolls, the New York Times reported. But rather than a ragtag group of lawyers like in 2020, the Republican National Committee is leading this effort, and a number of its leaders are election deniers. “Our unprecedented election integrity operation is committed to defending the law and protecting every legal vote,” RNC spokeswoman Claire Zunk told The Post. Wendy Weiser with the Brennan Center stresses that questioning election results is a normal part of the democratic process, but it has to be rooted in fact. Research shows it is extremely rare for noncitizens to vote. “These lawsuits are generally frivolous, without a basis in fact or law,” Weiser said. Weiser says the courts will hold the line this time, too. On Tuesday, a judge threw out a Republican lawsuit in Pennsylvania calling for stricter scrutiny of overseas ballots. The judge called the lawsuit, brought by six Republican members of Congress, “wholly speculative and legally inadequate.” Democrats say they’re ready for the battle in the courtroom. “We have been preparing for every eventuality,” Marc Elias, a longtime Democratic election attorney who is the Harris campaign’s lead recount lawyer, told The Washington Post’s Amy Gardner and Tyler Pager. And new this year is a federal law that says states have to certify the results by Dec. 11, and electors have to meet Dec. 17 to vote. Election experts hope those deadlines puts a hard stop to these lawsuits. | 
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