As we are just a breath away from the US election and as Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are fighting a real battle for who will be the next president of America, according to the polls, the former president seems to be already preparing the ground to claim that the election is “stolen” from him in the event of his defeat, CNN comments in an extensive report .

As the publication notes, Donald Trump has repeatedly made false claims that Democrats are “stealing” the election by distorting isolated voting problems before Election Day in an attempt to lead his supporters to falsely believe that the election is not legal if he loses.

For example, he argued that voting by non-US citizens is a widespread problem. He claimed there is no verification for overseas or military ballots. He claimed election officials are using early voting to commit fraud. He has claimed that many mail-in ballots are illegal, although he has encouraged his supporters to vote by mail this time around.

And most importantly: Trump has claimed that the only way Vice President Kamala Harris can win the election is by cheating.

“It’s unfortunate that he sees his path back to the White House as a denigration of a basic American institution like elections,” said Ben Ginsberg, a CNN contributor and Republican campaign lawyer who has served as general counsel for many of the party’s past candidates. “If you’ve just started paying attention to it, the claims being heard in 2024 that the electoral system is not trustworthy are remarkably similar to what he and his supporters were saying in 2020.”

In 2020, Trump lost the election and then spent two months trying to overturn the result. In 2024, with polls signaling a real “battle” in seven critical states, officials are bracing for another round of outcome misinformation — especially if the election hinges on the results of a few hundred ballots in one or two states.

Election experts say that despite the viral and exaggerated claims, the vast majority of voters will almost certainly experience a fast and smooth experience as they cast their ballots, whichever form of voting they choose.

Voter fraud is rare, but when it does occur, it is usually detected thanks to the layers of safeguards built into voting processes, according to independent election experts.

“It’s really helpful to remind people in this time of heightened stress, all the time, that they’re still responsible (for deciding the outcome of the election),” said Justin Levitt, a CNN contributor and election law expert at Loyola Law School who served as White House voting rights adviser during Biden’s tenure.

However, that hasn’t always stopped conspiracy theories from spreading on social media — including from Elon Musk, the CEO of X, who has given tens of millions of dollars to boost Trump’s campaign.

Strong focus on Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania could be the swing state in 2024. Trump has already claimed without evidence that his opponents are deceiving citizens, both on social media and at campaign rallies. At a rally last Tuesday in Allentown, Pennsylvania, Trump claimed the discovery of hundreds of suspected fake voter registration applications in Lancaster County was evidence of fraud.

Lancaster election officials and the county attorney announced last week that they received a batch of suspected fraudulent voter registration applications that had similar handwriting, incorrect information and other problems.

But that’s hardly proof of fraud — and actually shows the system worked to flag the applications, thanks to checks made to verify voters’ personal information and signatures before ballots were cast, said Kathy Boockvar, former secretary of Pennsylvania.

Elon Musk’s disinformation machine

Election experts say misinformation about presidential elections is nothing new. But what has changed is the volume of claims.

Musk’s acquisition of X in 2022, formerly known as Twitter, only added fuel to the fire. Social media has been used in previous elections to fuel conspiracies. But X and other social media companies have backed away from efforts to combat fake news spread on their sites.

Musk’s tactics have prompted election officials to go so far as to try — unsuccessfully — to get him personally to stop spreading baseless claims that could mislead voters.

In Michigan last week, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson tried to push back on a claim Musk shared about registered voters in Michigan, accusing him of “spreading dangerous misinformation.” Musk responded that Benson was “blatantly lying to the public.”

Musk also “embraced” claims that more ballots had been handed out to Michigan’s early voters than registered voters, which the Secretary of State’s office said was due to a data “formatting error” that was corrected.

While Lara Trump, the co-chair of the Republican National Committee, posted on X that her team had confirmed that this issue was due to an error, that hasn’t stopped others in the conservative media ecosystem from continuing to amplify the allegations of fraud — denying to back down from allegations of a larger conspiracy.

Manipulation of early voting numbers

In 2020, Trump railed against early voting and mail-in voting, claiming they were used as methods of cheating. His supporters, in response, voted heavily on Election Day.

This time, Trump and the Republican National Committee have fought hard to use early voting and mail-in voting, even as Trump has continued to attack them.

Five days before Election Day, more than 61 million Americans have already voted. Both Democrats and Republicans have looked for positive signs for their side based on publicly available analysis of state-reported data — and partisans have made sweeping predictions from the totals.

Voting and election modeling experts say trying to replicate election results based on early voting data is not statistically sound because there are gaps in the data and the data only describes people who vote before Election Day, not who they voted for or the intentions of tens of millions who will go to the polls on Tuesday.

Claims about early voting data have fueled fears that the numbers will be one thing Trump and his allies use to challenge the election results should Kamala Harris prevail. There are also concerns that Trump is preparing to declare victory early — just as he did in the early hours after Election Day 2020.

Baseless claims

Trump and his Republican allies have stepped up their litigation and rhetoric ahead of Election Day about the threat of non-citizen voting. Specifically, Trump claimed without evidence that Democrats are trying to allow non-US citizens to vote.

“Our elections are bad, and a lot of these illegal immigrants who are coming in, they’re trying to get them to vote,” Trump said in September’s presidential debate. “They can’t even speak English. They don’t even know what country they are practically in. And these people are trying to get them to vote,” he said.

Republicans have tried in the run-up to the election to purge voter rolls of citizens suspected of not being from the US. The Supreme Court sided with Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Young on Wednesday, allowing the state to proceed with a program that state officials say is designed to remove suspected noncitizens from voter rolls.

Voting rights groups have pointed to evidence that Virginia’s voter purge effort also caught eligible citizens.

The Justice Department also sued Alabama this fall over the state’s effort to remove more than 3,000 names from its voter rolls, arguing that it violated federal law against such action being taken near an election.

Experts say illegal voting by non-US citizens is extremely rare, and when it does happen, it’s usually quickly spotted. A recent Georgia check of the 8.2 million people on its rolls found only 20 registered noncitizens — only nine of whom had voted.

And Michigan earlier this week charged a Chinese national with voter fraud and perjury after he allegedly cast a ballot in the 2024 election, which experts say shows how rare cases of illegal voting are being uncovered.

Fears of another attempt to challenge the result

Since the chaos of the 2020 election, officials have spent the past four years preparing the ground for increased incidents of violence as well as trying to block the certification of a legitimate election result.

Last month, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security warned that “election-related grievances” could prompt domestic extremists to engage in violence before and after the November election.

Polling stations and polling stations have already been targeted. Authorities are investigating fires at polling stations in Portland, Oregon, and Vancouver, Washington, where hundreds of ballots were destroyed.

Once voting is over, election officials and experts are preparing to stop a repeat of what happened in the 2020 election, where Trump sought multiple avenues to try to overturn his election loss, culminating in his supporters rioting on Capitol Hill on January 6 , 2021.

Election officials and experts say they hope to avoid a repeat of 2020 and steps have been taken to mitigate any repeat attempts.

But Trump and his allies have laid the groundwork to try to contest the election if he loses.

The “Stop the Steal” movement has already sprung up before Election Day, and many of these activists are telling their supporters that the only way Trump can lose in 2024 is through fraud.