Experts: Trump's nine ways to manipulate the election

Elections in the United States are run by the states, and the federal government is not normally supposed to get involved in the implementation. But Donald Trump has made no secret of the fact that he is trying to control the midterm elections. He has also, as usual, tried to set the narrative that the Democrats are trying to "steal the election".

According to Trump, this is to be done, among other things, by allowing "millions of undocumented immigrants" to vote without being citizens and registered, or through manipulated voting machines.

At a Republican party convention in September, he urged participants to "cheat the hell out of you," whether "you're registered or not," because "the Democrats are doing it," writes Reuters.

However, there is no evidence of such extensive cheating. Voting without citizenship is a felony federal crime, punishable by jail time and deportation, and there's no compelling reason to take that risk.

Considering how Trump has acted during previous elections, where a famous example is when he called the election official in Georgia in 2020 after the loss to Joe Biden and demanded that they should "find enough votes" so that Trump would win, the states have begun to prepare for how Trump and federal authorities might act.

With the help of experts, Reuters has produced nine likely scenarios that Trump can use to try to manipulate the election. This could, for example, involve questioning the vote count and initiating proceedings against states so that they do not have time to report the results in time.

Here are some of them:

● Allegations of electoral fraud and tampered vote counting machines. Trump has previously used this as a pretext to force manual vote counting, which takes longer and leads to more human error. It delays the result so that deadlines are at risk of expiring.

● Armada of federal election observers. Trump may order the Justice Department to send out thousands of election monitors. According to the experts, there is a risk of political pressure, intimidating environment and suspicions of federal involvement. Trump urged his supporters in 2020 to "guard the election" and argued that election observers have a duty to intervene if local election workers are suspected of wrongdoing.

● Federal investigations and lawsuits against election workers. In recent years, local officials have come under pressure. Threats of prosecution and subpoenas tie up election workers' time and resources during the vote count. Trump has previously demanded that the Justice Department send official letters to states declaring that the election results were being investigated for fraud.

● ICE and military around the polling stations. The migration police ICE can intimidate immigrant groups so that they don't vote through actions in the surrounding area. Trump has also previously considered deploying the military through the so-called Insurrection Act, declaring a state of emergency and letting the military seize voting machines.

● Declare a national emergency. Based on the claims that there is foreign interference in the election. After the 2020 election, Trump's legal advisers proposed using an alleged national emergency to act against the election results.

According to Reuters, after the election, Trump may also initiate processes to challenge the results of the mail-in ballot from certain groups, exert pressure on state officials not to certify the election results on time and also through various procedures try to prevent elected political opponents from taking seats in Congress.

After the 2020 election, Donald Trump demanded that his then-Vice President Mike Pence and Republican members of Congress refuse to approve the election results from individual states. Pence refused, which was followed by the storming of the Capitol.