Column: Election deniers are already out in full force. What will happen next?

Hello and hallelujah. There are zero days left until the election, and for better or worse, we’ve made it this far. Congratulations, America!

But to quote Yogi Berra by way of Lenny Kravitz: Baby, it ain’t over till it’s over. By Tuesday night, we may have a winner. But also, we probably won’t.

One thing we will have if Kamala Harris is in the lead: The 2024 Donald Trump vote-fraud tantrum will go full hangry-toddler-in-the-grocery-store.

Yes, folks, it’s back: The Election Sabotage Movement, brought to you by the same folks who lied about voter fraud in 2016 and 2020, but bigger, badder and more berserk.

Our best-case scenario for coming days? Harris wins in a landslide that is hard to argue about (likely due to female voters, if they turn out), and by some miracle, Democrats take the House and keep the Senate. Long shot outcome, but not impossible. Democracy can breathe again.

Worst-case scenario? Let’s dive in.

Remember the ‘Big Lie’?

Ever since Joe Biden trounced Trump (and even before, really) MAGA has been certain that Democrats cheat when it comes to voting — because of course, Trump is so terrific and popular that it is inconceivable that he lost. And because he says it a lot.

That’s old news, but to recap:

In 2020, Trump claimed the election was all a “Big Lie.” Back then, the false and self-serving conspiracy theory centered on Dominion and Smartmatic voting machines. Those companies sued the bejesus out of prominent election deniers, including Fox News (which settled with Dominion for just under $800 million), Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, Trump sorta-lawyer-but-now-disbarred Rudy Giuliani and that dude who sells pillows.

Many of those cases are still pending, but they all taught the election sabotage movement an important lesson: Don’t lie about people who have enough money to sue you.

So for the last few years, the vote-fraud hucksters have focused on a different lie: That undocumented immigrants (brought into the country by Democrats) are voting illegally. That has become a gospel truth in the Trump campaign, though it is demonstrably false.

But it has the dual appeal of demonizing brown and Black people, another key plank of Trump policy, and targeting a group unlikely to fight back.

The next ‘Big Lie’

That brings us to 2024, when, if Trump loses, we will be inundated with false videos, firsthand stories and other specious proofs of the undocumented immigrant votes that turned the election. Trump himself has been ranting in recent days that cheating is already taking place and his campaign has already taken legal action by filing lawsuits in multiple states.

“We are seeing it already, the flood of disinformation,’’ said Norman Eisen, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution who served as the special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee for Trump’s impeachment. Now, he’s in the Democracy Defenders PAC, a group of Republican and Democratic lawyers who plan on fighting Trump election hijinks.

Eisen, speaking as part of a press briefing last week, said there have already been more than 200 cases filed in courts across the country claiming election fraud. The good news?

“They are losing,” he said, with about 125 “failures” so far. But losing in legal courts is different from losing in the court of public opinion, where sane people are left trying to explain that noncitizen Haitians aren’t illegally voting while nibbling poodle kebabs and assaulting the neighbors.

Dates to remember

Knowing where the conspiracy theories are coming from is our best tool for understanding the difference between legitimate voting concerns (of which there are always some) and flat-out Trumpian anti-democratic danger-drivel.

The next big date we should watch for is Dec. 11. That’s when states must appoint their electors (the folks who actually cast the vote for president in the electoral college), and the state executive (usually a governor) certifies them.

Those electors then meet on Dec. 17, and thanks to a law passed in 2022, they must vote for whichever candidate won the popular vote in their state — so no rogue electors.

Their electoral certificates must be received by the Senate and the national archivist by Dec. 25. Merry Christmas.

From there, a new Congress is sworn in on Jan. 3, and then we are back to Jan. 6, when Congress holds a joint session to count the electoral votes and hopefully will not be forced to once again run from rioters.

All of that means that between now and the first week of the new year, we can expect nonstop vote fraud allegations if Trump loses.

That will likely start with folks interfering with the counting of ballots. For months, MAGA has been “training” poll watchers. These are people who have been primed to see fraud in every shadow, and are being asked to take action.

Already in Shasta County, a hotbed of far-right nonsense, these watchers have videotaped, followed and harassed county workers so much that 10 of 21 workers in the elections office have quit, according to CalMatters.

The next weak point in our system comes with the board certification of those vote counts. This is when local elections officials give their stamp of approval to the results.

Here’s the sticky part of that: In many counties, MAGA has taken over election boards. Which means we will likely see some places where local officials refuse to certify the count. Eisen said there are more than 50 counties across the country where this could happen, and that strategy is the “big play” this year.

If a county doesn’t certify, it makes it sticky for the state to certify, meaning the state might not be able to send its electoral college results to Congress in time, creating a big mess. That means more lawsuits, and more distrust in the system as even well-meaning governors and secretaries of state get sucked into the conspiracy machine.

But whatever happens, don’t expect it to end even after a new president sits behind the Resolute desk.

Ty Cobb, a former White House lawyer for Trump who is now part of Democracy Defenders, said the chaos is the ultimate point of the election sabotage crew, wearing away at the fundamental trust in process and government that democracy relies upon — so that people will be open to the idea of an authoritarian leader to restore order, now or in the future.

“It’s done so that people will lack confidence,” he said. “It’s done to delegitimatize elections.”

What else you should be reading:

The must-read: Vote-counting rules in battleground states complicate when a winner is likely to be named
Voter lottery: Elon Musk’s lawyer defends daily $1-million payments to voters
The L.A. Times special: Trump’s culture of retribution has swept through American life

Stay Golden,
Anita Chabria

P.S. If Harris wins, it will likely be in large part because female voters turned out for her. In recent days, that women-powered enthusiasm has reached new heights (you’ve probably heard about that Iowa poll showing women are skewing heavily and unexpectedly in her favor in a state that has been reliably red). Last week, singer Cardi B endorsed Harris at a rally in Wisconsin — which seemed to make Elon Musk really angry. Go figure. They fought on social media, and I’m giving this round to Ms. B.

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