Trump Will Declare Early Victory. Here's What We Need To Say.

American elections are secure & reliable. Here are some facts to share online.

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Social Media Toolkit

Here is a toolkit packed with a lot of “election protection” messaging, graphics, videos & GIFs.

Click Here to Access the Toolkit

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Talking Points

Here are some crucial facts about American elections.

• Our elections are extremely secure and trustworthy. This fact was borne out after the 2020 election, when Donald Trump's legal team filed dozens of lawsuits claiming fraud and lost every single one of them, even with right-wing judges presiding.

• Our elections are decentralized and run mostly at the local level. It is basically impossible for massive, nation-wide fraud schemes to work because it would require complicity and coordination with many, many elections officials from different states, localities and (in reality) party affiliations.

• Only US citizens vote in US elections. In every state, you have to prove your identity in order to register and receive a ballot. The extremely small number of cases where non-citizens attempt to vote are well documented, and those individuals face felony charges. The penalties for voter fraud are steep and act as an effective deterrent. They always have, and they always will.

• It is completely normal for polls to be wrong. Polls have a significant margin of error. We saw in 2016 and 2020 that Trump overperformed the polling averages, once leading to a surprise victory. In the 2022 midterm elections and in various special elections since then, Democrats have largely been over-performing the polling averages. The polls could be right. The polls could be wrong. In either direction - even state by state.

• It is LIKELY that we will not know the result of the election on Election Night - and that is normal. Counting ballots takes time, and election officials have to wait until final ballots come in before they can really count them all. In some states, ballots just have to be postmarked by Election Day, and so may not even arrive to be counted for a number of days. Some of these elections are razor-thin, so we need to be sure to count every vote.

• We will see swings in who is leading as Election Night proceeds. Election officials count different batches of ballots in different orders. Vote-by-mail ballots, in-person ballots, absentee ballots, and ballots from different precincts all may be counted at different times. If Democratic or Republican voters prefer different voting modalities or if they are clustered in certain precincts, there can be significant swings in who is leading depending on the order in which ballots are counted. Totally normal. Swings don't mean something weird is going on - they just mean ballots are getting counted.

• Voter registration databases are regularly audited to ensure accuracy. Every state has procedures to check voter rolls and ensure registered voters are still eligible to vote. States regularly "clean up" the voter roll list and make sure only eligible citizens obtain ballots. These processes are overseen in the background by thoughtful, well-intentioned professionals and civil servants who want citizens to vote.

• Ultimately, it's important to realize that our election systems are overseen by people from ALL parties. They work in collaboration to ensure the process is smooth and the results are accurate. Election workers need to be respected because they're carrying out a crucial civic function that helps our democracy work.