And the final piece of the puzzle...
How Trump Could Steal the Election
One increasingly likely scenario where everything goes wrong.
It is the late evening of Nov. 3, 2020—Election Day. The race is tight. It’s come down to the three states that President Donald Trump barely won in 2016: Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Most in-person votes have been counted, and Trump holds a small lead in each state. But there are millions of mail-in ballots that election officials have not yet processed. Hundreds of thousands of voters dropped their ballots in the mail days ago, but they haven’t been received. Meanwhile, thousands of ballots that were mailed in time have been rejected due to alleged technical defects. The outcome of the election turns on all these outstanding votes. But Trump, on the basis of the results so far, declares victory and dismisses the remaining mail-in ballots as fraudulent and illegitimate. The Republican-controlled legislatures of all three states agree, assigning their electoral votes to the president. Trump has secured a second term in the White House.
This scenario is not paranoid or outlandish. It is now chillingly plausible. Trump has spent several months laying the groundwork to steal the 2020 election this way. He has tweeted that mail-in voting will make this “the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history.” Trump probably senses the vote count will not be completed on Election Day and seems to be seeding doubt before a single vote is cast. The Republican Party has largely backed the presidents’ schemes, and the courts have resisted intervening to protect voting rights. Three months out from Election Day, the nation appears to be barreling toward a crisis of Trump’s own design.
