On election day, some voting lines are likely to be long and some precincts may run out of ballots. An election office website may go down temporarily, and vote counting machines will freeze. Or the people helping to run the election could be acting like the people they are, forgetting their key to a local polling office so they have to open later than scheduled.

These types of issues have arisen throughout the history of US elections. Yet America’s poll workers have consistently nailed presidential elections and calculated the results accurately — and there’s no reason to think this year will be any different.

Elections are the foundation of democracy. They are also human exercises that, despite all the laws and rules governing how they should be conducted, can sometimes seem messy. They are run by election officials and volunteers in thousands of jurisdictions across the United States, from tiny towns to sprawling urban counties with more voters than people in some states.

It is a uniquely American system that, despite its imperfections, reliably produces certified results that stand up to scrutiny. This is true even in an age of misinformation and hyper-partisanship.

“Things are going to go wrong,” said Jen Easterly, director of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency.

None of this will mean that the election is flawed or rigged or stolen. But Easterly said election offices need to be transparent about hiccups so they can get ahead of misinformation and attempts to exploit routine problems as a way to undermine confidence in election results.

“At the end of the day, we have to accept that things will go wrong. I always do,” Easterly said. “It’s really going to come down to how state and local election officials communicate about those things that go wrong.”

An electoral issue? It is probably human error

It wasn’t that long ago that American voters accepted the results, even if their favorite presidential candidate lost.

Even in 2000, when 104 million votes boiled down to a 5-4 Supreme Court decision that effectively made Republican George W. Bush president, his opponent, Democrat Al Gore, was quick to concede. The Republic went on peacefully.

Times have changed dramatically since then.

The Internet, false claims and a voting public susceptible to conspiracy theories about widespread voter fraud have changed that. Confidence in the system is low, especially among Republican voters whose perceptions have been shaped by a steady pace of lies about the 2020 election by Donald Trump, the former president who is the Republican nominee on the Nov. 5 ballot.

At his campaign rallies, Trump continues to argue that the only way he can lose is if the other party rigs the election. In fact, it would be virtually impossible for anyone to rig a US presidential race, given the decentralized nature of the country’s elections, which are run by thousands of municipal or county voting jurisdictions.

What are more likely to be simple mistakes and technical mishaps that occur during each election.

“When the elections are very close and you have to look under the hood, sometimes you encounter some problems. Almost always those problems are the result of human error, incompetence — not wrongdoing,” said Rick Hasen, an election law expert and professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

“Both voter fraud and election administrator fraud are now very rare in the United States. When it happens, it’s not that hard to catch because of the safeguards in the system.”

Why do we need this discussion?

Distrust in elections is real and has serious consequences. Lies about rigging the 2020 election were a catalyst for the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.

This came despite Trump and his allies losing dozens of lawsuits aimed at reversing his loss to Democrat Joe Biden. Even a commission Trump created while president to investigate the 2016 election in hopes of identifying widespread voter fraud found none. Special police units established by several Republican governors have similarly come up empty-handed when looking for widespread fraud during the 2022 midterm elections.

In addition to the court cases, Trump’s attorney general and the review, recounts and audits in the presidential battleground states found no evidence of widespread fraud and affirmed Biden’s victory.

That didn’t matter.

By 2023, a sizable portion of Republicans believed that Biden was not legitimately elected, and election conspiracy theories took root in Republican-leaning communities.

It would be incorrect to say that there is never any fraud associated with elections. But in the 2020 election, an Associated Press investigation into battleground states where Trump contested his loss found too little to sway the election. In most cases, they were individuals acting alone, not as part of a grand conspiracy to rig the election.

“The story of the last few decades is that voting systems in the United States are very secure,” said Robert Lieberman, a political science professor at Johns Hopkins University.

If not fraud, then what should we expect?

Basic errors, whether human or technical.

In Jackson, Mississippi, a voting problem was blamed on inexperience and lack of training. In Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, inexperience was again to blame when polling stations ran out of ballots.

Sometimes the envelopes used to return mail-in ballots can cause problems. The Pennsylvania Department of State recently announced on X that due to high humidity levels across much of the state, “some voters are finding that mail-in ballots have their return envelopes already sealed.” He advised voters to contact their local election office for next steps.

Paper was to blame in one Maricopa County, Arizona, in 2022 when ballot printers malfunctioned and caused large backups in voter lines.

Potential problems on the horizon

One of the major concerns heading into the 2024 presidential election is the high turnover of election offices across the country, particularly in some of the presidential battlegrounds, said Edward B. Foley, a law professor who directs the university’s election law program. of Ohio State.

Before the 2022 midterms, for example, 10 of Nevada’s 17 counties had turnover in clerk or registrar positions, which oversee voting.

Threats and harassment of those who believe election conspiracy theories have fueled the attrition. Despite all the training that election workers receive, there is no substitute for the experience of going through a major election cycle.

Many of those who left had years and even decades of experience. In some cases, they were replaced by people with little or no experience who sometimes peddled conspiracy theories.

“If you’re looking for something to watch out for and be concerned about,” Foley said, “that’s the only place.”