By any stretch of imagination, the ballgame will not be over on November 5 when voting comes to a close. A first fear: former President Donald Trump declaring victory, perhaps even at the start of the counting process.

Vice President Kamala Harris was asked about this and her answer: Democrats have the “resources and the expertise” should Trump try and subvert. “This is a person, Donald Trump, who tried to undo… a free and fair election, who still denies the will of the people, who incited a violent mob to attack the United States Capitol and some 140 law enforcement officers were attacked. Some — were killed. This is a very serious matter,” Harris said.

At another level, Trump was trying to lay the groundwork of suspicion. On a day the Vice President was giving interviews, the Republican nominee had a different take. “She knows something that we don’t know. I think she knows some kind of result that we don’t know.” Trump was talking about a theme that he bandied about for some four years and continues to actively talk about during this campaign season: that Democrats are once again going to “steal” an election.

With some 18 million votes already cast, Trump and his surrogates have been aggressively pushing the accusation that postal, absentee and overseas ballots are suspect even while actively asking Americans to complete the process!

County and state officials have dismissed the charges and cases have been tossed out of courts. And defamation suits have been quite expensive, to say the least. But this has not stopped Trump and his supporters from peddling the idea.

Dispelling disinformation

The challenge appears to be two-fold. In the run-up to the actual voting on November 5, election officials seem to be working overtime to dispel disinformation, particularly as it pertained to the actual ballot. And the falsehoods are coming from not only those who have stood by conspiracy theories of the past but also from first time mega donors who have “lent” their campaign services.

A prominent Republican law maker is peddling the narrative of “vote flipping”; and a big time donor that voters in Michigan exceed the registered numbers. Both claims were rubbished by election officials.

The second test will be played out on and after November 5. The apprehension is not of Trump and his associates re-opening their playbook of 2020 but come up with a more fine-tuned strategy that would have incorporated all the failed lessons. The bottom-line would be not in repeating a high profile drama of January 6, 2021 on Capitol Hill; but in staging different dramas in State capitals, especially in the seven battlegrounds.

The meeting of the electors in their respective states will be on the first Tuesday after the second Wednesday in December which is the 17th to cast their votes for the President and Vice President.

Neither the constitution nor federal laws bind an elector to vote according to popular vote in their state, but nearly 40 states and the District of Columbia require electors to do so with a range of penalties including prosecution for a “faithless elector”. The quiet worry is that Trump and his cronies, could tamp up pressure on electors, especially in swing states. The Electoral College being a public body, anything pertaining to it is not anonymous, including names of electors and how they voted.

Working overtime on voter fraud has a single purpose: to land this 2024 election in the House of Representatives hoping that Republicans have the numbers to make Donald Trump as the 47th President of the United States.

The writer is a senior journalist who has reported from Washington DC on North America and United Nations