U.S. election officials say voting should be smooth and urge people not to be misled by conspiracy theories

American voters head to the polls Tuesday to choose the country’s next leaders in a mass democratic experiment where tens of millions of votes will be cast without incident.

But false claims of voter fraud in 2020 and former U.S. president Donald Trump’s repeated charges of cheating mean that everything, from voter eligibility to logistical problems like long lines, ballot functionality and vote counting, will be scrutinized closely, especially in the key battleground states.

Election officials across the U.S. – particularly in swing states – have pledged to uphold the integrity of the vote and urged voters not to be misled by conspiracy theories.

“Here in Georgia, it is easy to vote and hard to cheat,” Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Monday. “Our systems are secure and our people are ready.”

The 2024 election has already featured allegations from Trump and other Republicans that the vote is “rigged.” Trump has made repeated false claims that Democrats are cheating in the election, and he’s twisted isolated problems with voting in an effort to prime his supporters to believe the election is not legitimate if he loses.

He has alleged that voting by noncitizens is a widespread problem, that there’s no verification for overseas or military ballots, that election officials are using early voting to commit fraud and that massive swaths of mail-in ballots are illegitimate. The claims are incorrect and baseless.

Broadly, US elections are an extraordinary undertaking: In 2020, more than 161 million voters cast ballots that were counted across 50 states, the District of Columbia and five U.S. territories, at a total of 132,556 polling places and with the aid of 775,101 poll workers, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

Federal elections are also largely decentralized, as local jurisdictions have the primary responsibility of tabulating, reporting and certifying results.

Overall, the vast majority of voters express positive views of the voting experience. The majority of voters are at least somewhat confident that this election will be well run, regardless of which candidate they support, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey.

However, supporters of U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris are far more confident, with 90 per cent saying the election will be run smoothly, compared to 57 per cent of Trump supporters. The latter are particularly dubious about whether absentee and mail-in ballots will be properly counted.

Harris supporters are also more confident than Trump supporters that it will be clear who won the election after all the votes are counted, by an 85 per cent to 58 per cent split.