A friend recently sent me a message on Instagram with the note “Enjoy this return to 2016” and shared the debate clip when Hillary Clinton reminded everyone that Donald Trump has a sorry history of “trickery”.Clinton’s comments are worth revisiting in full:

“Every time Donald thinks things aren’t going his way, he claims that whatever it is is rigged against him. The FBI conducted a year-long investigation into my emails. They concluded that there was no case. He said the FBI was defrauded. He lost the Iowa caucus. He lost the Wisconsin primary. He said the Republican primary was rigged against him. Then Trump University is sued for fraud and racketeering. He supports the judiciary and the federal judge is rigged against him. There was even a time when he didn’t get an Emmy for his TV show three years in a row and started tweeting that the Emmys were rigged. This is a mindset. That’s what Donald thinks. And it’s funny, but it’s also very disturbing. This is not how our democracy works. We have been around for 240 years. We had free and fair elections. We accepted the results when we may not have liked them. And that’s what we have to expect from anyone on the debate stage during the general election.”

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In the eight years since he warned us, we have endured the Big Lie of 2020, the insurrection of January 6, 2021, and we are preparing for what further disinformation will infect Election Day and beyond. If Trump falls behind or loses, we must surely expect the post-election period to be characterized by lies designed to disrupt the electoral process and democracy itself.

How could the election be undermined? Deceive, disrupt and deny

Election experts at Protect Democracya cross-ideological nonprofit dedicated to defeating the authoritarian threat and building more resilient democratic institutions, has developed a comprehensive Strategy to subvert the 2024 election which highlights three tactics election officials are using to back up claims that the 2024 election was rigged: deceive, disrupt, deny.

The first is to deceive the electorate by spreading misinformation through bad actors through the media and social media to erode voter confidence. We are already seeing this in 2024 through challenges to voter status, disinformation about non-citizen voters (look no further than Wisconsin’s statewide referendum on noncitizen voting) and request that the ballots be counted manually.

The second is to disrupt or otherwise cause chaos in the electoral process. This could be accomplished by making illegal threats to election officials or targeting them with ads suggesting they don’t have to certify the results. It could also take the form of recruiting face-to-face survey observers or poll workers in swing states and training them to be “spies”. Or it could be submission “zombie trials” – which are submitted despite the fact that they have no chance of success, but can be used cancel the voters after that.

Finally, they reject any certification of election results they don’t like. This could look like Trump again claiming victory before all the votes had been counted given that we very likely could not have a clear winner on election night. It could also look like another campaign to pressure local officials whose job it is to certify county-level results or interest in the Electoral College process.

Maybe Trump will win outright and all this hand wringing about denying the election will be for naught. But if it doesn’t, what do we, the people who trust that our choices are safe and secure, do to counter these strategies so they don’t gain enough momentum? We come stocked with accurate information and truth.

Pro-democracy groups organized and prepared to push back

What differentiates 2024 from 2020 is how much more organized and prepared the national pro-democracy organizations were to put their counter-offensive strategy in front of the bad actors. In addition to Protect Democracy, Brennan Center for Justice, Informing Democracyand others have tons of research, white papers, FAQs, and more readily available for people to read and share.

For statewide election information, go straight to the horse’s mouth: the Wisconsin Election Commission. He has a section on his website, where he debunks myths about voting and elections such as “Were over 1,000 ballot papers sent to ineligible voters in the 2024 general election?” The answer is not. The WEC also points out some cases where attempts at voter fraud were made and prevented.

For more local information, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel feverishly published Transparent voting information from what poll watchers can and cannot doto explain why Milwaukee will report a final count after midnightTO filming a non-stop demonstration of voting equipment on election day.

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The Wisconsin League of Women Voters also published a number of articles named Vote Bulletin that explains everything from the pre-electorate equipment testing to the electoral rules regarding convicted criminals.

Unfortunately, when it comes to some people, no amount of evidence will dissuade them from believing that there is no way Trump can lose other than massive fraud.

Those of us who stand for the truth must be prepared to be louder than the deniers of choice, backed by accurate information and ready to condemn, correct and call out the lies.

Kristin Brey is the “My Take” columnist for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

This article originally appeared on the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Opinion: False election claims in Wisconsin to be dismissed. Good