Here’s the three-pronged approach experts fear Trump will employ to prevent votes from being counted
(Official White House Photo by Tia Dufour)

Harvard Law Prof. Laurence Tribe, former federal prosecutor Jennifer Taub and Joshua Geltzer, the former senior director for Counterterrorism at the National Security Council, came together to author a column outlining the three-pronged approach they think President Donald Trump will use to undermine the election in November.


Trump's sinking approval ratings have caused him to grow desperate, prompting him to invent fables about how voting by mail is prone to massive fraud. Trump has already tried this approach with Florida’s tight 2018 gubernatorial and Senate races, and he's gearing up to do it again.

"We’ve received a frightening preview in the Census Bureau’s recent announcement that it plans to cut off population-counting efforts one month early, well before needed to meet the December 31 deadline for delivering census results to Congress," the trio write. "This decision was made after the Trump administration itself had asked for more time, not less. It’s the same play: When Trump doesn’t like the numbers coming in, he stops counting."

"Halting vote-counting after Election Day requires Trump to stage a three-pronged attack: slowing mail delivery, then urging Republican state legislatures to deem Election Day “failed” because of the many uncounted votes, and finally denouncing as illegitimate all vote-counting that continues after Election Day—even as slowly delivered mail-in ballots keep arriving," they continue.

Trump's plans for November should be met with action from state legislatures and courts to show just how futile this strategy would be for Trump, the trio write. In so doing, they would be reinforcing the nation's confidence in our voting system’s integrity and reaffirming a simple principle: "If we believe in one person, one vote, then every American’s lawfully cast vote should be counted."

Read the full piece over at The Atlantic.