What Happens if a Candidate Contests the Results of the 2024 Election?

Americans will have a President-elect within the coming days. While there are many checks and balances in place to ensure the safety of America’s election process, there are a few ways candidates could contest the results.

One route candidates can take is through a recount. The rules of who can request a recount vary by state—in some, a recount is automatically prompted if the race is within a tight margin, while in others, candidates can request a recount, according to Matthew Weil, the executive director of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Democracy Program. In some states, the margin has to fall within a specific percentage in order for candidates to request a recount.

Candidates could decide to file an official contest of the certified results, according to Richard Pildes, a professor at New York University School of Law and an expert on constitutional and election law. A campaign could also bring other legal action challenging an aspect of the election. “If a campaign has a legitimate, factual, and legal foundation for bringing a contest challenge, that’s the way disputes over the results ought to be handled,” Pildes says. “If a legal action is brought that doesn’t have the appropriate factual and legal foundation, then it’s an abuse of the system or abuse of the process. It also is potentially undermining confidence in the election for no legitimate reason.”

Former President Donald Trump has already begun to sow doubt on the integrity of the outcome if he loses, repeating spurious and unfounded allegations of cheating in key states. Both Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaigns have teams of lawyers preparing for post-election litigation.

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The timeline to resolve election disputes is tighter for the presidential race than other seats. States have until Dec. 10 to resolve any disputes over the presidential race because members of the Electoral College meet and cast their ballots on Dec. 17.

Both Pildes and Weil say that it’s rare for any of these paths to change the results of a race. Many experts have emphasized that America’s election process—and your vote—is safe. Weil says the country has made even more improvements to the system over the years, such as through audits.

Weil says that recounts “very rarely move numbers by anything more than double digits” because even if the margin percentage seems small, it still typically represents thousands of votes. And the bar for litigation is high: “Not only do you have to prove the harm, you also have to somehow prove that the harm was great enough that it impacted enough ballots to change the outcome of the election,” Weil says.

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False claims about the election process began to spread after the 2020 election, when Trump refused to concede to President Joe Biden. Trump’s campaign and allies proceeded to file dozens of unsuccessful lawsuits challenging the result.

Experts worry that contesting results without sufficient evidence could sow distrust in the election process. On Jan. 6, 2021, rioters who insisted—without evidence—that Trump won the election stormed and ransacked the U.S. Capitol to disrupt certification of Biden’s victory.

“The risk to having a bunch of evidence-free challenges is a risk to the confidence in the voting process,” Weil says. “I think it’s very clear that when we have candidates who make the claim that are feeding into a narrative that’s out there, that that is going to lead to more distrust of the elections.”