DETROIT (Reuters) – With the U.S. election day just days away, officials in the most competitive battleground states are bracing for misinformation, conspiracy theories, threats and possible violence.

Authorities in Philadelphia, Detroit and Atlanta, former President Donald Trump’s three favorite targets for false voter fraud claims, have stepped up operations against a repeat of 2020’s chaos. Philadelphia’s ballot counting depot is now surrounded by fences topped with barbed wire. Some election offices in Detroit and Atlanta are protected by bulletproof glass.

In Wisconsin, election workers were trained in de-escalation techniques and polling places were rearranged to provide escape routes for workers if they were threatened by protesters.

In Arizona, the epicenter of false Republican claims of fraudulent voting in 2020, the secretary of state is working with local officials on how to respond to misinformation, including deepfake images of alleged fraud.

While opinion polls show Republican Trump and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris neck-and-neck in Tuesday’s vote, officials say there’s something they can’t predict or control: What might Trump and his allies say while votes are still being counted on election night? .

“If it’s too thin then they’ll throw everything they have away, right?” Philadelphia City Commissioner Lisa Deeley, a Democrat, said in an interview. “There is nothing we can do to stop the former president from continuing his campaign of misinformation and disinformation. But what we can do is continue to push it back with facts.

Deeley and 30 other election officials from both parties told Reuters they were preparing for a repeat of 2020, when Trump and his lawyers made false accusations about late-night voting and rigged machines in an attempt to overturn his loss. In the wake of these allegations, clerks across the country have been subjected to threats and harassment from Trump supporters who believe the election was stolen.

The Trump campaign did not directly respond to questions about its plans to contest the results. Danielle Alvarez, senior counsel for the campaign and the Republican National Committee, said in a statement that the party had hired 230,000 poll watchers, poll workers and legal experts to “bring transparency and accountability” to the election.

“While Democrats will stop at nothing to undermine our elections, we fight for a fair and secure process where every legal vote is properly counted,” he said.

Throughout his campaign, Trump repeated the lie that he won in 2020, signaling that he would oppose a possible defeat to Harris.

On Friday, in a post on Trump’s Truth Social platform, Trump wrote that there was “rampant Fraud and Fraud” in 2020 and threatened to prosecute election officials and others “engaged in unscrupulous behavior” this cycle.

Election officials say one of their biggest fears is a very close result, where the outcome will depend on court fights over a small number of disputed ballots. The Republican National Committee has targeted election officials with dozens of lawsuits challenging various aspects of the voting process; Democrats saw the move as the beginning of a potential losing fight. Republican poll watchers who monitor votes being cast and counted have been trained to be aggressive in scrutinizing the process, and their ranks are still filled with activists who deny the 2020 results, according to training calls reviewed by Reuters.

URBAN BATTLEFIELDS

Tensions are particularly acute in Philadelphia, Atlanta and Detroit, Democratic Party voting centers in swing states. Trump accused them of allowing election fraud in 2020 and has done so again since the start of the campaign.

At a rally in Iowa in December, he urged his followers to go to three cities and “protect the vote”; The statement alarmed Democrats, who warned that it could prompt their supporters to intimidate voters or disrupt the counting process.

Daniel Baxter, Detroit’s chief operating officer of absentee voting and special projects, said the city is preparing for potential unrest over planning with local police and federal officials. The polling station was fortified with armed guards and bulletproof glass. The counting of mail-in votes has been moved to a more secure location at the downtown convention hall. In 2020, Trump supporters tried to disrupt the process by banging on windows and shouting “stop the count.”

“We’re planning a rebellion,” Baxter said in an interview. We want to make sure that we plan for the worst as well as hope for the best.” He said he is not affiliated with any party.

At a virtual meeting for potential poll workers, an official from the Republican National Committee warned volunteers that Detroit was not to be trusted. “Because that city, if I could get away with it… you know, I would tear it down, I would try,” Morgan Ray, the RNC’s Michigan election integrity director, said, according to a previously unreported recording from September. The 10 meetings were obtained by Reuters. Ray and the RNC did not respond to requests for comment on his remarks.

Trump also singled out Detroit, America’s largest black city, and said on Oct. 10 that if Harris won, the rest of the country would be “like Detroit.” Democrat Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey said she believes racism underlies Trump’s attacks on cities like his. “He’s the kind of person who thinks he can easily scare Detroiters because we’re a predominantly Black city,” he said in an interview. “But we’re not afraid of him at all.”

The Trump campaign did not respond to any questions about Winfrey’s remarks.

Philadelphia has overhauled its vote count since delays in 2020 allowed Trump and his allies to spread conspiracy theories and his supporters to target election officials with threats. In 2020, election clerks in Philadelphia and elsewhere grappled with a snowballing number of vote-by-mail votes thanks to more liberal vote-by-mail rules that many states adopted in response to the pandemic.

On election night in 2020, Trump declared himself the winner after early results showed him ahead despite thousands of ballots remaining to be processed in Philadelphia. With the election hanging in the balance, it took five days for the city to count enough ballots to make it clear that Biden had indeed won Pennsylvania and clinched his run for the White House.

The city has since moved election operations to a warehouse protected by razor-wire fences, 15 miles from the downtown convention center where votes were counted four years ago as protesters gathered outside. In Pennsylvania, unlike other states, state law prohibits election officials from starting work on mail-in ballots until 7 a.m. on Election Day.

By contrast, Michigan passed a law allowing pre-processing of mail-in ballots in 2022. Election workers in Detroit now have eight days to verify and tabulate absentee ballots before Election Day. Winfrey, the city clerk, said she hopes to report the results in time for the 11 p.m. TV news on Nov. 5.

Philadelphia officials said they expect the numbers to be released much more quickly this year, with nearly all votes counted on Wednesday or Thursday. The city expects to receive more than 225,000 votes by mail; This is far fewer than the 375,000 flooded four years ago. The city purchased new, faster machines to open envelopes and scan ballots, as well as new technology that officials say speeds up the process of checking mail ballots.

Philadelphia commissioners said they hope the faster release of results will reduce the spread of disinformation in the time between the polls closing and news organizations declaring the winner.

“This is the window that allows the greatest disinformation and disinformation to spread and harassment and threats to election workers,” said Seth Bluestein, a Republican who serves on the city’s three-person elections commission. “That’s why it’s so important for us to narrow that window and count ballots as quickly as possible.”

In Atlanta’s majority-black Fulton County, Georgia’s most populous county, authorities are bracing for pro-Trump disinformation. In 2020, Trump lawyer Rudolph Giuliani falsely accused two election workers in Georgia of illegally counting votes, triggering death threats against them and fueling the false claim that Trump won the state. The Georgia state election board, now dominated by three pro-Trump Republicans, has called for new investigations into Fulton County.

Opinion polls in the state show Harris and Trump roughly tied. On Election Night, if Harris appears to be winning the state, Georgia State Board of Elections Democrat Sara Tindall Ghazal said she expects to “see disinformation” about election machines being hacked and voting tampered with.

Fulton’s board of elections chair Sherri Allen, a registered Democrat who serves on the nonpartisan board, said the county is taking steps to reassure skeptics. Last year, it launched a new vote-counting operation at a massive suburban warehouse 34 miles from downtown Atlanta. Vote counting will be broadcast on giant screens to increase transparency. “You can see it happening on the screen,” Allen said. “We didn’t have this before.”

“IT’S A DIFFERENT WORLD NOW”

Beyond these urban battlegrounds, election officials in Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin and North Carolina are making preparations.

In North Carolina, some county election offices have installed panic buttons, bulletproof glass, security cameras and heavier doors, said State Board of Elections spokesman Patrick Gannon. He said election officials are trained to de-escalate tensions with angry activists. Police were given pocket guides on election law in anticipation of increased difficulties.

Nevada, where the 2020 election was announced only four days after the final votes were cast, changed laws and procedures to speed up the counting process and increase confidence in the results. For the first time, mail-in votes began being counted two weeks before Election Day. A new centralized statewide voter registration database allows citizens to track their votes and ensure they accurately reflect their choices; officials hope this will alleviate concerns about mass fraud.

In Arizona, the secretary of state’s office said it was training election officials to respond to artificial intelligence-generated misinformation about the election, including deepfake videos and images.

And in Wisconsin, the state legislature this year passed an election protection law that creates a new crime of battery on an election official. Some municipalities have passed ordinances targeting people who might try to obstruct voting. For example, Madison now has an ordinance that imposes a $1,000 fine on anyone found threatening or otherwise obstructing the work of poll workers.

Some changes are as subtle as moving chairs to improve the safety of poll workers.

In the small town of Caswell in northern Wisconsin, clerk Tamaney “Sam” Augustin moved poll workers to the opposite end of the room so they faced each other instead of sitting by the door, with two exits immediately behind them.

“Nothing happened,” he said, “but we live in a different world now.”

(Joseph Tanfani reported from Philadelphia and Ned Parker reported from Atlanta. Additional reporting by Tim Aeppel, Brad Brooks, Peter Eisler, Helen Coster and Aram Roston. Editing by Jason Szep)