Donald Trump may well and easily lose the presidential election of 2024 and yet return to the office of president. Every American, and certainly every voter, should be cognizant of the threat already in place to subvert a free and fair election.

Your concern should have begun with the brute force Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell used to increase the conservative majority on the Supreme Court, eschewing practice and principle to install Trump-nominated political radicals over more qualified jurists. It was an example that the boundaries of American politics are in Republican circles at least, receding.

The next level of concern was the Trump campaign’s plan, well before the November 2020 election, and as offered freely by Trump’s confidant and advisor Roger Stone (pardoned by Trump of his crimes) to reject the results of the election should he lose.

All of Trump’s efforts to remain in office after losing that election spanned the full range of government manipulation and raw power politics, failing primarily because the courts refused to support the specious arguments of voting fraud offered by Trump.

While Trump’s efforts failed, they did expose two fundamental weaknesses in our election mechanics, weaknesses available to any politician willing to deny the political boundaries of the country before their party. And, as a frightening example of such disregard for patriotism first, we need only look to the Republican House abandoning their urgency for border reforms in favor of border chaos at the simple urging of ex-President Trump.

This week, in a Newsweek article by Tom Rogers (a Newsweek editor-at-large) the two potential methods of returning the loser of the 2024 election to the presidency were outlined with clarity. First, the Speaker of the House, a Trump accolade, Mike Johnson, could use his position to urge Republicans to refuse to certify several close state results where Biden prevails in 2024, citing irregularities real or imagined. 

If you think this unlikely, consider that Johnson personally convinced 139 House Republicans to refuse to certify the 2020 election results, entirely fact-free of evidence. 

Refusing certification of enough state results would then throw the election into the House of Representatives, where each state has a single vote to cast for who will become president. There are more Republican states (though fewer voters) than Democratic states, thus allowing the loser, Trump, to be certified as the winner of the 2024 election.

The second avenue to allow Trump, should he lose, to return to the White House could work in conjunction with the first strategy. Republicans, unencumbered by patriotic boundaries, urged by an ex-president who resorts to personal threats and prompted by party leaders more dedicated to winning than to protecting our democracy, could mount another challenge to electors, a strategy attempted and that failed in 2020.

Since the 2020 election, Congress has passed legislation making this type of voter nullification more difficult, but the House can refuse to accept the new regulations with impunity because the courts cannot interfere with Congress due to the separation of powers in the Constitution.

This would allow Republicans to recognize the new electors, reject the states’ certifications challenged by the lame duck Republican Congress, name Trump the election winner and, as an additional incentive, recognize only a Republican majority by their rejection of Democratic states’ election outcomes.

What makes this scenario most concerning is the existing evidence that the Republican Party has offered us examples that they are willing to subvert democracy for political gain.

The best protection to an outcome that would throw the nation into civil unrest without question, is to vote for democracy on the ballot in 2024, rejecting those who most certainly will seek to deny the voters their voice once again.

Jim Crawford is a retired educator and political enthusiast living here in the Tri-State.