Not everything will run perfectly on Election Day. Still, US elections are remarkably reliable
WASHINGTON — On Election Daysome voting lines are likely to be long and some precincts may run out of ballots. An election agency’s website may temporarily go down and the voting machines may freeze. Or people who help organize elections might just act like the people they are and forget their key to a local polling station, forcing it to open later than planned.
These types of problems have occurred throughout the history of American elections. Yet election workers across America have consistently called presidential elections and accurately tallied the results — and there’s no reason to believe this year will be any different.
Elections are a foundation of democracy. They are also human exercises that, despite all the laws and regulations that determine how they should be performed, can sometimes seem messy. They are conducted by election officials and volunteers in thousands of jurisdictions across the United States, from small townships to sprawling urban counties with more voters than some states.
It is a uniquely American system that, despite its imperfections, reliably produces certified results that stand up to criticism. This is true even in an age of disinformation and hyper-party politics.
“Things will go wrong,” he said Jen Easternthe director of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
None of these things will mean that the election is corrupted, rigged, or stolen. But Easterly said election agencies need to be transparent about the hiccups so they can avoid disinformation and attempts to exploit routine issues as a way to undermine confidence in election results.
“Ultimately, we have to recognize that things will go wrong. They always do,” Easterly said. “It will really come down to how state and local election officials communicate about the things that are going wrong.”
Not so long ago, American voters accepted the outcome, even if their favorite presidential candidate lost.
Even in 2000, when 104 million votes boiled down to a five-to-four Supreme Court decision that effectively made Republican George W. Bush the president, his opponent, Democrat Al Gore, quickly conceded. The republic continued peacefully.
Times have changed dramatically since then.
The internet, false claims and a voting public susceptible to conspiracy theories about widespread voter fraud have changed that. Confidence in the system is lowespecially underneath Republican voters whose perceptions are shaped by a stable one drumbeat of lies about the Elections 2020 Through Donald Trumpthe former president who will be the Republican candidate on the November 5 ballot.
During his campaign rallies Trump continues to claim that the only way he can lose is if the other party manipulates the election. In fact, it would be virtually impossible for anyone to rig a U.S. presidential race given the decentralized nature of the country’s elections, which are run by thousands of municipal or provincial voting precincts.
Which is more likely simple mistakes and technical mishaps that occur in every election.
“When the elections are very close and you have to look under the hood, you sometimes encounter problems. Almost always, these problems are the result of human error, incompetence – and not malfeasance,” said Rick Hasen, an election law expert and professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.
“Both voter fraud and election administrator fraud are currently very rare in the United States. If it does happen, it is not that difficult to notice, thanks to the safety measures in the system.”
Distrust in elections is real and has serious consequences. Lies about the 2020 elections were rigged were a catalyst for the January 6, 2021, attack at the Capitol.
This happened despite Trump and his allies lost dozens of lawsuits aimed at reversing his loss to the Democrat Joe Biden. Even a commission that Trump created While the president wanted to investigate the 2016 election in hopes of identifying widespread voter fraud, nothing was found. Special police units created by some Republican governors emerged in similar fashion empty handed as they sought widespread fraud in the 2022 midterm elections.
In addition to the lawsuits, Trump’s attorney general And reviews, tells And audits in the presidential states on the battlefield found no evidence of widespread fraud and affirmed Biden’s victory.
That didn’t matter.
As late as 2023, a significant portion of Republicans believed Biden was not the legally elected oneand election conspiracy theories have done so too taken root in Republican communities.
It would be incorrect to say that this is never the case any fraud associated with elections. But in the 2020 election, an Associated Press survey of the battleground states where Trump contested his loss found found too small an amount to change the elections. In most caseswere they individuals acting alone, and not as part of a grand conspiracy to organize the elections.
“The story of the last few decades is that voting systems in the United States are very secure,” said Robert Lieberman, a professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University.
Fundamental errors, both human and technical.
In Jackson, Mississippi, a voting problem was attributed inexperience and lack of training. In Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, inexperience was the culprit again when polling stations ran out of ballots.
Sometimes the envelopes used to return mail-in ballots can cause problems. The Pennsylvania Department of State recently announced on It advised voters to contact their local elections office for next steps.
Paper was the culprit in Maricopa County, Arizona, in 2022, when voting printers had problems and caused major backups in voter lines.
One of the biggest concerns ahead of the 2024 presidential election is the high turnover in election offices across the country, particularly in some of the presidential battlegrounds, said Edward B. Foley, a law professor who directs Ohio State University’s election law program.
Before the 2022 midterm elections, for example 10 of Nevada’s 17 counties had turnover among their clerk or registration positions, which oversee voting.
Threats and intimidation of those who believe election conspiracy theories fueled the churn. Despite all the training election workers receive, there is no substitute for the experience of working through a major election cycle.
Many of those who left had years or even decades of experience. In some cases they have been replaced by people with little or no experienceand who sometimes have proclaimed conspiracy theories.
“If you’re looking for something to pay attention to and worry about,” Foley said, “that’s one place.”
___
Associated Press writers Christina A. Cassidy and Ali Swenson contributed to this report.
____
Read more about how US elections work Explanation of the 2024 electionsa series from The Associated Press designed to help understand American democracy. The AP receives support from several private foundations to improve its explanatory reporting on elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.