How Donald Trump may try to challenge the election results if he loses again

If Vice President Kamala Harris wins in November, election officials and experts worry that former president Donald Trump and his supporters will not accept that outcome — and could again try to overturn his loss.

In 2020, Trump refused to acknowledge his loss, spread false claims about widespread fraudulent voting, sought to reverse the results in swing states and tried to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to help him stay in power as rioters raided the U.S. Capitol. Many of those strategies can’t be used again because Trump no longer occupies the White House, and state and federal officials have since tightened election laws and policies to make it harder to undermine the will of voters.

» READ MORE: If Trump loses in November, GOP may blame inflated concerns about noncitizen voting — like Pa. mail ballots in 2020

But vulnerabilities persist. The risks this year will depend on the particulars of the election — and the closeness of the results. Many election officials and experts are worried false narratives could again take off, eroding public trust and leading to chaos, confusion and, in a worst-case scenario, violence. David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, said that those who oversee elections in key states are once again bracing to be harassed and threatened for doing their jobs.

“This is not a hypothetical,” he said. “This is not fearmongering. This is what happened in 2020 and since, on a widespread scale.”

Trump has not committed to accepting the outcome of the upcoming election, no matter who wins, and he has already claimed without evidence that Democrats will cheat. He has also threatened to jail election officials and others “involved in unscrupulous behavior” related to voting.

Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt in a statement did not directly answer whether Trump would honor the outcome as determined by election officials, saying only that he would “accept the results of a free and fair election.”

» READ MORE: Pennsylvania’s 2024 election results could be contested for weeks in court. Both sides say they’re ready for that fight.

Here are some of the vulnerabilities that experts are most worried about:

It could again take several days to declare a winner, as some swing states like Pennsylvania and Arizona take longer than others to count votes. As the public waits for results, false narratives could quickly spread.

» READ MORE: How to spot misinformation online and avoid falling for false claims in this presidential election

Trump has a long history of blaming his electoral shortcomings on nonexistent voter fraud. In 2020, Trump falsely claimed victory on election night, even though full results weren’t known for days. He could do the same this year — and now misinformation and disinformation can spread even faster because of sophisticated artificial intelligence-generated content and a hands-off approach from social media platforms.

» READ MORE: Nearly 80% of Americans are concerned about the spread of ‘disinformation’ — with Black people among the most targeted

Recounts are likely to spring up if the results are close, and they could last for weeks, particularly if they get bogged down in lawsuits over whether officials followed proper procedures.

After Trump lost Wisconsin in 2020, he used a recount to try to throw out hundreds of thousands of ballots. The state Supreme Court rejected his arguments in a 4-3 decision. A fight in 2024 could again come down to one or more state high courts, including in battlegrounds like North Carolina and Arizona, where conservatives control the courts.

» READ MORE: Pa. election officials are bracing for another round of lawsuits, recount requests, and claims of fraud in 2024

“We also don’t know how the threat landscape will morph,” said Norm Eisen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who served as special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee for Trump’s first impeachment. “The way the litigation landscape looks [weeks before the election] is almost never the way it looks in November."

Already Republicans and Democrats have filed dozens of lawsuits over how the 2024 election will be conducted. Many of them have been resolved, while others will get rulings in the coming weeks. Some litigation could persist beyond Election Day and influence how courts consider disputes that arise once votes begin to be tallied. In 2020, Trump or those who support him lost more than 60 lawsuits over the election. Even if lawsuits fail, they can slow the process down and create the impression that the validity of the results are in doubt.

» READ MORE: Several lawsuits could change how votes are counted in Pennsylvania in November. Here’s what you need to know

“If you inundate the system more than it can handle, you result in a kind of denial of service attack and you kind of shut the whole system down,” said Edward Foley, the director of the election law program at Ohio State University. “And our judicial system isn’t built for massive amounts of litigation around election results.”

There is a tight timeline for determining a winner after election officials tally the results. Federal law requires states to certify their outcomes by Dec. 11. The presidential electors meet six days later, on Dec. 17, and send the results to Congress.

The new session of Congress begins on Jan. 3, and the House and Senate are to formalize the presidential results on Jan. 6 — the day the U.S. Capitol was attacked by Trump supporters four years ago. The next president will be inaugurated on Jan. 20.

Election experts are worried rogue local or state officials could refuse to certify their results and hamper the dispatch of electoral votes to Congress on time.

» READ MORE: Trump is still lying about winning Pa. in 2020. He’s still wrong.

Trump supporters who might not accept the election results “will not be spending two months packing up their SUVs and driving to D.C. They are going to be focusing their efforts on county seats, county courthouses, little county voting centers in hundreds of places all over the country if Trump loses,” said Becker.

In recent elections, a small number of local officials have temporarily refused to certify results but have ultimately done so, often under court order. New rules in Georgia would make it easier to hold up certification, although experts say courts would probably intervene.

Election experts have fewer concerns about state legislatures trying to change a state’s electoral votes. Congress in 2022 passed the Electoral Count Reform Act, which bars states from changing how they appoint electors after the election and effectively prevents them from reversing the will of voters.

Once low-key affairs, the electoral college meetings in each state on Dec. 17 could draw protests. Some officials fear disruptions could prevent electors from voting and raise untested questions about how to tally the official results for each state.

A crucial part of Trump’s attempt to reverse the 2020 results involved having his supporters put themselves forward as presidential electors in key states that Joe Biden won. That plot failed, and prosecutions against would-be electors or those who helped them are ongoing in four states.

A similar effort could unfold in 2024 but it would be much harder to pull off. The Electoral Count Reform Act, passed in response to the attempt to overturn the results, sets a higher threshold for Congress to consider electoral votes that have been submitted by someone other than a governor. And those who pose as electors could face charges.

As vice president, Harris will preside over the deliberations of which electoral votes to count. That role will put her in a politically awkward position because she will have to preside over the final determination of the outcome. She would have a chance to thwart Republicans if they tried to improperly count electoral votes.

When House members are sworn in on Jan. 3, their first task will be to elect a speaker. In 2023, it took four days and 15 votes to elect a speaker. Later that year, it took three weeks to choose a new leader. Congress would be in uncharted territory if it didn’t have a speaker by Jan. 6, when it must meet to certify the presidential results. The House can perform few functions without a speaker, according to historians, and in October 2023 was largely immobilized while members debated who should lead them.

In 2020, Trump allies came up with their plan to have Republican electors meet in states that Biden won at the last minute. Its full scope didn’t become apparent until a year or more after the election. Similarly, this year something new could be tried that attorneys and election officials haven’t yet gamed out.