Experts fear post-election crisis as Trump sets stage to dispute results

“If it’s a very close election, there’s no question in my mind that he’ll contest it,” said former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, a CNN contributor who backed Trump in 2016 and supports his reelection. “Even if it’s not a very close election, I think he’ll want to contest it, but I don’t think he’ll have a broad base of support to protest this election, and he wouldn’t get very far.”…

States dramatically scaled up vote-by-mail options, using spring and summer primaries as a “dry-run” for the November election. There were successes, like Kentucky, with its sprawling “supercenters” where people could safely vote in-person. But there were disasters too, like Wisconsin and Georgia, which were plagued by missing absentee ballots and grueling lines.

“Many of these states are not prepared for what this election will be,” said Amy Walter, national editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. “They have never done vote-by-mail like this. It’s messy and mistakes are going to be made. People are going to stand in long lines. Ballots won’t arrive. There will be people in every state who can make a case that the process was flawed.”

Even these fixes create new problems of their own. States will be handling more absentee ballots than ever, which will slow down the tabulation process. Some jurisdictions accept ballots postmarked on Election Day, which further slows down the vote count. It took longer than a week for winners to be declared in recent congressional primaries in New York and Kentucky.