One Party Wants to Make Voting Easier. The Other Wants to Throw Elections Into Doubt.

A quick look at three swing states.

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EVERY FOUR YEARS BRINGS ANOTHER ROUND of hand-wringing and debate over the legitimacy and fairness of the Electoral College, chiefly because of two of the anomalies it produces. First, it results in a disproportionate amount of attention, power, and influence wielded by a small handful of swing states. And second, it can result in situations where the candidate who received the most votes does not win the election, as happened in 2000 and 2016. The tighter the race, the greater the chance of such a mismatch between the popular vote and the Electoral College result.

This year, the race remains tight, with Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump 49 to 47 percent in the RealClear average of polls (and 49 to 46 in the FiveThirtyEight average). Remember that Hillary Clinton beat Trump by 2.1 percent in the popular vote yet lost in the Electoral College by 77 votes.

Since 2020, lawmakers and politicos from both of the major parties have taken steps to maximize their side’s advantage. Democrats have tried make it easier for people to vote, at both the national and state levels. Republicans have tried to do the opposite, aiming to possibly thwart a certified election altogether. Changes in the laws in three key battleground states—Georgia, Michigan, and Pennsylvania—offer a Goldilocks-style comparison of how things appear to be shaking out: bad, good, and somewhere in between.

Last week, the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Party of Georgia, and other plaintiffs sued Georgia’s GOP-controlled State Election Board over a new rule it approved by a 3–2 vote last month that requires a hand-count of all ballots cast on Election Day. The challengers argue that the hand-count rule will invite “bad-faith actors to claim that fraud has affected election results” while putting “the security of the ballots themselves . . . at risk.”

A separate Georgia lawsuit also filed last month challenges two other Republican-backed rules requiring county election officials in Georgia to (1) conduct a “reasonable inquiry” into election results before certifying them and to (2) “examine all election related documentation created during the conduct of elections prior to certification of results.” It seems likely that each of these three administrative rules will be struck down, or at least clarified by the courts, for conflicting with existing statutory law in Georgia.

Yet the three new rules may still have the effect of opening up numerous avenues for conspiracy theorists to manufacture grounds for election fraud that could operate to stymie certification in Georgia, possibly throwing into question the legitimacy of the election.

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SINCE 2022, TWO OTHER IMPORTANT STATES for this election—Michigan and Pennsylvania—have made some smart electoral moves to prevent some of the trickery that emerged 2020, although with mixed results.

Michigan Democrats now control both chambers of the state legislature (a change from 2020) while holding control of the governorship, the office of secretary of state, and the attorney general’s office. A citizen initiative passed in 2022 made it significantly easier for voters to have their ballots counted by expanding access to mail voting and early in-person voting, including allowing weekend voting for first time, affording more time for election officials to process and tabulate ballots, and authorizing voters use additional types of voter ID. Voters who are unable to show physical ID will still be able to vote if they sign an affidavit attesting to their identity under penalty of perjury.

The new Michigan law also allows voters to opt into being on a permanent mail voting list, which means they automatically receive a ballot in each election. In addition, the citizen initiative made improvements to ballot dropboxes, included prepaid postage on mail-in ballots, and created a system for online ballot tracking. Michigan voters will now get notice of any errors on their mail-in ballot materials and be given a chance to correct any errors to help ensure that every valid ballot is counted.

In response to the Wayne County canvass board’s refusal in 2020 to certify the election for Joe Biden, the new state law even removed any perceived discretion on part of canvass boards to arbitrarily refuse to certify results or certify a losing candidate. The law makes clear that the county canvass boards’ role is ministerial: They are now required to certify election results based only on the official records of votes cast. This is all a far cry from what the Republicans on Georgia’s state election board have been up to.

Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania, Democrats control the governorship and the attorney general’s office, and although the secretary of the commonwealth is a Republican, he was appointed by Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro. Since 2020, Pennsylvania law has changed to automatically register every qualified Pennsylvania resident who gets a new or renewed driver’s license or ID card from the DMV unless they opt out.

On the minus side, mail-in ballots must be received by November 5 in order to be counted—unlike in 2020, when a COVID-era rule allowed for counting of mail ballots within three days of the Election Day. In 2020, some counties also took extra measures to facilitate voting by mail, such as sending mail-ballot applications to all voters, but such proactive steps are not in the works again this year. Multiple Republican-led lawsuits challenging Pennsylvania’s mail-in voting procedures are already active, and over fifty election officials from the state have quit in the wake of Trumpian attacks on election workers. What this means is that we probably won’t know the winner in Pennsylvania on election night, giving Team Trump plenty of time to lie about election security and voting.

The Trump campaign doesn’t care about winning hearts and minds with an inspiring candidate and a vibrant policy platform. For Republicans, the election comes down to gaming the system. The strategy could work.