America braces for perfect storm of election chaos
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Everywhere you look, signs are mounting of a tinderbox election that will test the outer bounds — and breaking points — of American democracy, honesty and civility.
Why it matters: A perfect storm has been brewing for years now — fueled by extreme polarization, election denial, political violence, historic prosecutions and rampant disinformation. Mayhem is bound to rain down in November.
5 conditions for chaos
1. A desperate Donald Trump:
- The former president, twice indicted for trying to overturn his 2020 loss to President Biden, repeatedly has refused to commit to accepting the results of the 2024 election — unless he wins.
- Trump has preemptively accused Democrats of "cheating" by swapping out Biden for Vice President Kamala Harris — a process he's labeled an unfair "coup" — and engaging in "lawfare" through criminal prosecution.
- Trump and his allies — especially Elon Musk — have promoted the false claim that Democrats are deliberately "importing" millions of undocumented immigrants to illegally vote in the election.
- Now a convicted felon scheduled to be sentenced after the election, Trump is in an existential fight not just for his political future — but for his personal freedom.
The latest: In a Truth Social post late Saturday, Trump decried "rampant Cheating and Skullduggery" in the 2020 election and promised "long term prison sentences" for anyone involved in "unscrupulous behavior" in 2024.
2. A nail-biter like no other:
- In the 15 presidential elections since 1964, a candidate has led by more than five points in the national polling average for at least three weeks, according to CNN data analyst Harry Enten.
- In 2024, that hasn't been the case for a single day. The race is extraordinarily close — and will come down to tens of thousands of votes in just seven battleground states.
- One nightmare recipe for chaos: A 269-269 Electoral College tie, which would trigger a contingent election in the House, whereby each state delegation casts a single vote. Trump would be likely to win in this case.
3. A battleground legal brawl:
- Republicans already have filed more than 100 lawsuits against various voting and election procedures — part of a formalized "election integrity" push grounded in Trump's baseless claims of fraud in 2020.
- Trump's campaign and the Republican National Committee say they've built a network of about 175,000 volunteer poll watchers and poll workers. Democrats have assembled their own massive legal team and voter protection program as they gird for aggressive election challenges.
- Experts are especially anxious about the potential intimidation of election workers forced to count ballots under tense conditions, David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, told Axios.
4. The specter of violence:
- On Jan. 6, 2021, a violent mob stormed the Capitol to try to stop Congress' certification of the Electoral College results. Eight weeks ago, a gunman came within inches of assassinating Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania.
- Political violence has increasingly become normalized in the U.S.: In a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in May, more than two-thirds of Americans said they were concerned about extremist violence after the election.
- Top Democrats tell Axios they fear Trump will again cry "stolen election" if he loses and call for street mobilization to "take back the country" — potentially leading to multiple Jan. 6-like incidents at state capitols.
5. A cesspool of disinformation:
- Some conservative-leaning cable news networks — Fox News, Newsmax, OANN — are likely to tread more carefully around baseless claims of election fraud after being sued for defamation in the aftermath of 2020.
- But on X, where pro-Trump owner Elon Musk and his allies routinely pump out conspiracy theories to their millions of followers, the information environment has deteriorated dramatically since 2020.
- Compounding the problem is the threat of election interference by foreign adversaries: An axis of disinformation helmed by Russia, China and Iran has added new sophistication to its influence operations.
Reality check: The whole country — from voters and political parties to Hollywood and big-box retailers — is preparing for potential chaos. That makes it more likely that the system once again will hold.
- The Electoral Count Reform Act passed by Congress, for example, added new guardrails to the process for certifying election results — ensuring the vice president has only a ceremonial role on Jan. 6.
- "While I expect that if Trump loses, he will try everything he can to do whatever is possible to seize power, he will fail," Becker told Axios. "I'm 100% confident that who actually wins the election in November is going to have their hand on the Bible in January."
