We know there’s a real possibility that former President Donald Trump will reject the election results if he loses next November — because he rejected the results in 2020. But there’s also a chance that President Joe Biden will reject the results if he loses — because Hillary Clinton and many Democrats refused to accept her loss in 2016, as did Al Gore in 2000. In other words, be prepared for a challenge to the 2024 election results, and the accompanying political chaos, whoever loses.
And that’s especially true if, as many election experts predict, the election is close, with only a handful of swing states providing one candidate a very slim margin of victory.
Ironically, post-2020 efforts undertaken by both political parties to, in their view, expand voting access and ensure election integrity could be used by the losing party to justify a claim that the election was rigged or stolen.
Let’s start with Trump. He claimed, and still claims, he won the 2020 election by a large margin. While neither he nor anyone else has been able to prove that claim, Trump cannot bring himself to concede he lost. That’s because in Trump’s mind only losers lose. By contrast, he considers himself a winner, and winners don’t lose. Ergo, Democrats must have done something to steal the election.
True, Democrats in numerous states modified their 2020 election processes, either temporarily or permanently. They used the COVID-19 excuse to expand both how and when people could register to vote and the way they could cast a ballot. And Democrats did so with very few checks and safeguards to ensure voter eligibility and election integrity.
In short, the Democrats’ actions opened a door for Trump and Republicans to claim election fraud. Those mostly blue-state “reforms” made Republicans deeply skeptical of Democratic efforts then, and opinions haven’t changed much in three years.
As for Biden, he and many other Democrats have spent the last three years blasting new, mostly red-state election-integrity laws. Biden has called them Jim Crow 2.0 and a serious threat to democracy. Many of those laws actually expanded voting access and made voting easier than in some blue states.
Those oft-made claims of threats to democracy open the door for Biden and Democrats to challenge the election results if Biden loses. It wouldn’t be the first time.
Several Democrats objected to Congress certifying Donald Trump as president on Jan. 6, 2017. To be sure, things did not get out of hand then. No mob attacked the Capitol, as they did on Jan. 6, 2021. But Democrats and their media allies used the claim that Russia helped Trump win — even though it was the Clinton campaign that manufactured the evidence that has come to be known as the “Russia hoax” — to challenge the legitimacy of the election results.
Recall also that in 2000, then-Vice President Al Gore conceded the presidential election to George W. Bush and then rescinded his concession. What followed were 36 days of political and legal struggles in Florida, with the U.S. Supreme Court finally weighing in, giving Bush the Florida victory by the very slimmest of margins — 537 votes. Many Democrats have never accepted that loss. Nor did Democratic star and Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams accept her defeat to the Republican gubernatorial nominee, Brian Kemp.
So, if Trump and Biden are their parties’ presidential candidates, as seems likely, and if the election is close, with a few swing states putting one of the two candidates over the top, expect a knock-down, drag-out brawl as the losing side claims evidence of — or least the possibility of — election fraud.
Democrats will likely say new, red-state election integrity laws disenfranchised millions of voters — even if the vote count is higher than normal. And Republicans will likely say that blue-state changes made it possible to cheat and deny Trump the victory.
2024 could be our most chaotic election yet. A large majority of voters don’t want either Trump or Biden to run again. And most voters don’t want the loser to challenge the outcome. And yet today, 10 months from the election, both scenarios look like a distinct possibility.
Merrill Matthews is a resident scholar with the Institute for Policy Innovation in Dallas, Texas. Follow him on X@MerrillMatthews.