With little more than a week before the election, the focus now is on motivating people to vote. Both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are involved in the frenzy of campaigning, and the press is obsessed with every decimal point in the polls. But what happens after Election Day? The fact is, even if Harris wins decisively, Trump is never going to concede. He still insists that he won the 2020 election. As surely as the sun rises in the east, Trump will claim that the election was rigged and that there was widespread fraud. Related CPAC proves that the GOP isnt there any more. Just the cult of Trump. The Republican Party is against everything and in favor of nothing. All it stands for now is yelling no at everybody else, and Trump has become the golden idol that conservatives will follow. Literally. If you think Trumps chances of stealing the election are a lot lower than they were in January 2021, think again. The last election was a dress rehearsal for this one. There is a frightening and real possibility that Trump will try to subvert the will of the people and succeed, thanks to his Republican allies. Dive deeper every day Join our newsletter for thought-provoking commentary that goes beyond the surface of LGBTQ+ issues Subscribe to our Newsletter today The effort to try to subvert the outcome is more thought-out, more strategic, more organized, more coordinated [than] in 2020, Sean Morales-Doyle, director of the voting rights program at the Brennan Center for Justice, told The Guardian.In fact, the effort has been underway for some time. Trump and his cronies have been fanning the flames of doubt about the election for months. The primary lie is that Democrats are registering undocumented immigrants. A lot of these illegal immigrants coming in, theyre trying to get them to vote, Trump said at a rally last month. That lie has been repeated ad nauseam by his supporters and widely amplified by Elon Musk on X. Republicans are also circulating the lie that voting machines are being hacked. Musk, who fancies himself Mr. Tech, has said on X that voting machines should be banned outright, even though they are far more accurate than hand-counting paper ballots, the retro approach that the MAGA world glorifies. Voter suppression has also been in full swing this cycle, thanks to the GOP. Limiting early voting, reducing the number of drop-off boxes for ballots, and purging voter rolls are all part and parcel of the effort to reduce Democratic turnout. Thats whats been happening. Heres what could happen.For one thing, if the race is too close to call on election night, Trump is likely to repeat his 2020 call to stop the vote count (only if hes ahead, of course). Republicans tend to vote in person, and mail-in ballots, which take longer to count, favor Democrats. In Pennsylvania and Wisconsin two battleground states the Republican-majority legislatures stopped efforts to allow mail-in ballots to be counted prior to Election Day.Then, the real effort to steal the election will start. MAGA believers have already taken over some local election boards and are prepared to refuse to certify election results. (Ironically, many of these election boards are in heavily pro-Trump counties, where Trump will win by a landslide.) They will put pressure on state officials not to certify as well, and Trump will up that pressure a thousand-fold. His supporters will rally by calling on GOP-controlled legislatures to select alternate electors to the Electoral College. The ludicrous legal theory that this rests upon insists that legislatures have the right to decide election results. Whos to say it will fail this time, especially since the Supreme Court seems willing to carve out all kinds of exceptions for Trump?Trump tried this in 2020, and it failed because Congress refused to take the bait and question the duly elected electors. This was Mike Pences one moment of courage, which could very well have cost him his life had the mob gotten to him on January 6. But the ultimate defeat of Trumps scheme was a near thing, and not just because of the violence. At least 140 members of Congress had said that they would not certify the Electoral College results, and at least a dozen Republican senators announced the same in advance of the vote. In the past four years, Republicans have become even more deferential to Trump. There are likely to be many more Republicans who would go along with any Trump-led conspiracy. As fake as the electors may be, its just the excuse that Trumps supporters will use to seize power. Chief among them is House Speaker Mike Johnson. Johnson was a key figure in trying to help Trumps election steal last time. As a constitutional law attorney, Johnson would be able to concoct a faux argument in favor of rejecting Harris electors and awarding the election to Trump. To succeed in this effort, Republicans would have to retain control of the House. (In 2021, Democrats controlled the House.) Politico has outlined in frightening detail exactly how the scenario would play out. In essence, it assumes Republicans control both the House and the Senate. They call a joint session of Congress and argue that the waters are too muddy due to their lies about election fraud, as well as the tsunami of lawsuits, by then still unresolved, that Republicans will have unleashed immediately after the election. As a result, no one is certified the winner. That throws the election back into the House for what is called a contingent election. Each state delegation gets to cast a single vote for the president. Republicans currently control 26 of the state delegations, compared to 22 for Democrats. A lot of pieces have to fall into place for Trump and his followers to subvert the election. But its not impossible. Congress passed a bipartisan bill to close some of the loopholes that Trump tried to exploit in 2021, but there are still plenty of others left. Moreover, all of this drama will be playing out against a background of violence and chaos nurtured by the extremists in the MAGA mix. Whatever happens on November 5 will be just the beginning of the test for democracy in America. The best outcome would be a resounding defeat for Trump. But no matter what happens, Trump will proclaim himself the winner and use every power he can to claim the presidency. He and his followers are more than willing to ignore the will of the people if thats what it takes to succeed.Subscribe to theLGBTQ Nation newsletterand be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.