Almost two years ago, I wrote an article listing out the ways in which our decentralized election infrastructure is prone to partisan infection, particularly from right-wing activists. 

While the 2022 midterms that year proved to be disappointing for Republicans — Trump candidates in competitive districts suffered while abortion candidates thrived at the ballot box — the election cycle coming up in November could be big for the far-right, especially if they have further exploited our election infrastructure’s weaknesses. 

To be clear, we have an extremely decentralized electoral system. States get to write the rules for how they certify the votes of their residents including elections for federal positions like the president. There is even a considerable degree of electoral variation across counties, cities and towns. All in all, there are over 10,000 election administration jurisdictions in this country. 

Putting this decentralized election infrastructure into conversation with our electoral college and our first-past-the-post-system paints an even more worrying picture. 

We are one of the very few countries in the world that indirectly elects their head of state, which is what the Electoral College effectively does. South Africa, Botswana, Suriname and some small island states are the only other countries that do the same. Every other democracy in the world looks to their popular vote when deciding who gets to run the country. And they do it this way because it is more democratic. 

We have a system that is built on the fears of a potential “tyranny of the majority,” and in this respect our electoral college is a counter-majoritarian institution. The intended goal is to preserve democracy — or at least that is what we have always been led to believe — and the way in which votes are allocated represents another counter-majoritarian institution. 

Nearly all U.S. congressional and state legislative elections are decided using a first-past-the-post electoral system. In this system, voters are carved up into districts who then get a ballot and vote for a candidate from what is usually one of two parties. Each district normally gets one representative, and a candidate wins the only available seat whether they get 90% of the vote or 50.1% of the vote. 

Meanwhile, most democracies in the world utilize a proportional representation system. In this system, a district can have a number of seats, let’s say 10 for this example. Residents then vote for the party they want to fill those seats, and the 10 seats are proportionally allocated to the parties in a way that reflects the election results. So if Democrats got 42% of the vote, then they would get 4 seats, and if Republicans got 58% of the vote, then they would get 6 seats. 

In a way, our Electoral College represents a first-past-the-post system. If Kamala Harris wins Georgia in November by 51%, then she gets 16 electoral college votes instead of eight. What this does is effectively prevent the popular will of the people from mattering in presidential elections. If we had a system similar to what pretty much every other democracy has, which is a system where all that matters is the popular vote, then the only Republican that would have won an election since 1992 would have been Bush in 2004. 

So what does all of this have to do with our decentralized electoral system? The answer is that it makes it much easier for one county election board, one secretary of state or one malicious grassroots initiative to screw everything up. 

If all that mattered was the popular vote, it would take a national conspiracy to manipulate the results of an election. But because of our system, where only a handful of states, and a handful of counties within those states, get to decide who our president is, all it takes is a focused and strategic attack on an important state or county to throw an election into disarray. 

Since I last wrote about this in 2022, a lot has changed. Pro-Trump election officials in states across the country have since taken up vital positions. One state in particular that has witnessed a lot of this change is Georgia. 

The person who certifies the election results in Georgia is the state’s secretary of state. This person is currently Brad Raffensperger, the same official who refused to “find” votes for Trump in the now infamous 2020 phone call between the two. But in order for Raffensperger to certify the votes, officials at the county level must collect the votes, send them to a local election overseer and eventually they are certified by a state election board before reaching Raffensperger’s desk. 

Since 2020, the state election board in Georgia has come to be dominated by those who act in a way that benefits Trump. To clarify, there are five members on this board, all of which are appointed with only one being a Democrat. With the majority they have garnered, Republicans have changed the rules in a way that prolongs a process that is supposed to be more ceremonial in nature. 

One change that has been made to the process is that the GA Election Board can now make inquiries into the results before certifying them. This means that every small detail can now be blown out of proportion, adding fuel to a political base already prone to conspiratorial thinking, so that more time can be added to a campaign that craved it in 2020 when searching for excuses to deny election results. 

The trend to be worried about is the one that is playing out in Georgia: conservatives changing and exploiting the rules of an already complicated and convoluted process. What this does is make certifying results take even longer, and when the frustration as a result of this time-consuming process builds up, far-right Republicans will point to an array of conspiracy theories that de-legitimize an electoral system that is already under a lot of stress. We saw what this looked like in 2020, but expect it to be both more chaotic and more orchestrated this time around. 

I would love to paint a picture that shows how this fear is overblown, but unfortunately, this fear is too realistic to be overblown. Next month will be an anxiety-inducing ride for those who don’t want an authoritarian racist to succeed, and all I can say is hold on. Hold on tight, because what has been in the works for four years is about to expose itself, and all we can hope is that this presidential election remains more bloodless than the last one.