在距离菲尼克斯车程一小时的弗洛伦斯市一个天气晴朗的日子里，当地投票中心的工作人员正在进行一场桌面推演——这是对选举地狱般状况培训的委婉说法。推演的重点是设想各种灾难——火灾、断电、炸弹威胁——然后制定B计划、C计划和D计划。官员们过去总是会做一些世界末日般的准备，但今年的推演更加彻底，威胁的范围也更广泛。例如，如果联邦执法人员出现在投票站，他们该怎么做？
On a fine day in Florence, a city an hour’s drive from Phoenix, staff at the local voting centre are doing a tabletop exercise, the euphemism to describe training for election hell. The point is to imagine calamities—fire, power outages, bomb threats—then have a Plan B, C and D. Officials have always made some doomsday preparations, but this year’s exercise is more thorough, and the range of threats broader. What, for example, should they do if federal law-enforcement agents show up at the polls?
工作人员梳理了各项规程。来自司法部的监督员如果有官方信函则可以留下来，事实上政府已经表示将在全国各地派出1000名监督员。其他任何特工都必须离开，除非他们本人正在投票；亚利桑那州法律规定投票站周围必须有75英尺（25米）的警戒线。“如果他们拒绝离开，那这个情景就真的成问题了，”皮纳尔县记录办公室的一名选举工作人员说，弗洛伦斯是皮纳尔县的治所。换句话说：给治安官打电话。
The staff run through the protocols. Monitors from the Department of Justice (DoJ) can stay if they have an official letter, and indeed the government has said 1,000 will be dispatched across the country. Any other agents must vacate unless they are themselves voting; Arizona law mandates a perimeter of 75 feet (25 metres) around precincts. “If they refuse to leave, that’s when the scenario becomes a scenario,” says an election worker in the recorder’s office in Pinal county, of which Florence is the seat. In other words: call the sheriff.
皮纳尔是一个共和党县。它的一部分位于亚利桑那州第六国会选区，该选区是11月3日中期选举中几十个竞争激烈的众议院选区之一。我们的预测显示，民主党将夺得众议院控制权，甚至可能也拿下参议院。挥之不去的问题是，唐纳德·特朗普可能会试图采取什么阴谋诡计（如果有的话）来颠覆选举的合法结果。
Pinal is a Republican county. A portion of it lies in Arizona’s 6th congressional district, one of several dozen competitive House races in the midterm elections on November 3rd. Our forecast suggests Democrats will flip the House and possibly the Senate, too. The nagging question is what schemes, if any, Donald Trump might attempt to subvert the election’s legitimate results.
他试图推翻2020年大选失利的努力，让所有人意识到美国分散式选举体系中的诸多压力点，以及他可能采取的极端手段来施压这些点。到目前为止，他今年所做的诸多干预尝试基本没有产生实质效果，国会和最高法院阻止了他修改投票程序的尝试。各州而非联邦政府负责选举；而他们的规则基本保持不变，与往届选举周期相同。然而，行政部门已从维护选举诚信的力量转变为破坏选举诚信的力量，11月，该体系将再次接受考验。
His effort to overturn his loss in 2020 wisened up everyone to the many pressure points in America’s decentralised election system, and the lengths he might go to squeeze them. So far, his many attempted interventions this year have amounted to little, with Congress and the Supreme Court blocking his efforts to rewrite voting procedures. States, not the federal government, run elections; and their rules are mostly unchanged from past cycles. However the executive branch has shifted from being a force to support elections’ integrity to one undermining it, and in November the system will be tested once more.
一些变化并非主动干预，而是帮助的撤除。去年，网络安全和基础设施安全局（CISA）停止承担地方参与网络威胁共享服务的费用。该项目的成员数量下降了三分之二。正如前CISA官员 Geoff Hale 所说，其结果是网络攻击更可能蔓延。“如果一个司法管辖区遭遇一次攻击并被攻破或击退，但如果他们不分享该攻击的信息，那么其他选举司法管辖区仍然同样脆弱。”同样，联邦调查局（FBI）据称没有计划成立其选举指挥中心，而在过去几年，该中心曾监测威胁并与地方执法部门协调。
Some changes represent not active interference, but the removal of help. Last year the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) stopped covering localities’ cost to participate in a service for sharing cyber threats. Membership in the programme is down by two-thirds. The upshot is that cyberattacks are more likely to proliferate, says Geoff Hale, formerly of CISA. “If a jurisdiction faces one and gets compromised or repels it, but if they’re not sharing information about that attack, then other election jurisdictions remain equally vulnerable.”Similarly, the FBI reportedly has no plans to stand up its election command centre, which in past years monitored threats and co-ordinated with local law enforcement.
然而，选举管理者也越来越将联邦政府视为威胁，Public Rights Project（PRP）诉讼组织的 Jonathan Miller 如此表示，该组织代表地方政府。今年早些时候，司法部表示将起诉允许非公民投票的官员。这种选民欺诈极为罕见，但非公民投票的幽灵助长了选举被窃取的神话。正是这一原因，MAGA 活动人士称他们希望在投票站实施移民执法。
However, election administrators increasingly view the feds as a threat, too, says Jonathan Miller of Public Rights Project (PRP), a litigation group that represents local governments. Earlier this year the DoJ said it would prosecute officials who let non-citizens vote. Such voter fraud is extremely rare, but the spectre of non-citizen voting propels the myth of election theft. It is the reason that MAGA activists say they want immigration enforcement at the polls.
他们的存在将是非法的：联邦法律禁止政府官员向选区派遣武装特工。代表丹佛市，PRP已向国土安全部提起诉讼，旨在防止选举日出现类似情况。特朗普政府表示，它没有巡逻选区的意图，但可能采取有针对性的行动，例如对涉嫌非法移民的人发出逮捕令。民主党人担心，在投票站附近出现执法存在会削弱少数族裔的投票率，而少数族裔往往倾向于支持民主党。
Their presence would be illegal: federal law prohibits government officials from sending armed agents to precincts. On behalf of the city of Denver, PRP has sued the Department of Homeland Security, seeking to pre-empt anything like that on election day. The Trump administration says it has no intention to patrol precincts, but that it may take targeted action, such as serving warrants against anyone suspected of being an illegal immigrant. Democrats fear that an enforcement presence near polling places would dampen turnout by minorities, who tend to vote Democratic.
加州大学圣地亚哥分校的一项调查显示，三分之一的西班牙裔表示，尽管他们是公民，但仍预计会在投票站被盘问。近一半人表示，他们预期会遭遇某种形式的威胁。
In a survey by UC San Diego, a third of Hispanics said they anticipate being questioned at the polls despite being citizens. Nearly half say they expect some form of intimidation.
选举专家们的噩梦场景是，特朗普先生可能试图夺取投票设备或选票。这将打破“保管链”——即规定谁可以处理选票、选票流向何处的控制机制，以确保所有选票都能被清点。一旦失去保管权，就很难判断选票是否被篡改。“我会对验证这些选票感到非常不安，”亚利桑那州马里科帕县前任记录官斯蒂芬·里彻说。“然后你就会踏上一条黑暗的道路，比如，你是否必须重新举行选举？”
Election experts’ nightmare scenario is that Mr Trump might try to seize voting equipment or ballots. That would break the “chain of custody”, the controls that set out who can handle ballots and where they go, ensuring all are accounted for. Losing custody would make it hard to know whether ballots had been manipulated. “I would feel very uncomfortable about validating those ballots,” says Stephen Richer, a former recorder in Arizona’s Maricopa county. “Then you start going down the dark road of, like, do you have to call a new election?”
过去两起与选举相关的事件已经让民主党人警惕可能的干预。今年1月，FBI突袭了佐治亚州富尔顿县的一个选举办公室，并带走了2020年的材料。随后在3月，加利福尼亚州河滨县的共和党治安官查德·比安科没收了去年全州公投中已投出的选票。FBI和比安科在申请逮捕令时均引用了错误信息。
Two incidents concerning past elections have primed Democrats to the possibility of meddling. In January the FBI raided an election office in Fulton county, Georgia, and carted away material from 2020. Then in March, Chad Bianco, a Republican sheriff in Riverside, California, seized ballots that had been cast in a statewide referendum last year. Both the FBI and Mr Bianco cited misinformation in their requests for warrants.
11月可能会出现类似的花招吗？之前的事件发生在选举结束后，而不是选举进行到一半的时候。本月，特朗普先生在白宫接待了蒂娜·彼得斯（Tina Peters）。她曾是一名县书记官，因在2020年让另一名大选结果否认者未经授权接触投票机而入狱，随后获得科罗拉多州民主党籍州长的赦免。据报道，她在访问华盛顿期间，向特朗普先生兜售了一项在今年11月没收选票的计划。
Could there be a similar ruse in November? The prior incidents occurred after elections were over, not in the middle of one. This month Mr Trump welcomed Tina Peters at the White House. A former county clerk, she went to prison for giving a fellow election denier unauthorised access to voting machines in 2020, then was pardoned by Colorado’s Democratic governor. On her visit to Washington, she reportedly pitched Mr Trump on a plan to seize ballots this November.
埃德·马丁（Ed Martin）是另一位向采访者描述他们会面的“让美国再次伟大”（MAGA）麻烦制造者，他对中期选举做出了这样一段神秘的评价：“总统将不得不做他该做的事。”
Ed Martin, another MAGA troublemaker who described their meeting to an interviewer, offered this cryptic assessment of the midterms: “The president’s going to have to do what he’s going to do.”
州和地方官员正处于高度戒备状态。科罗拉多州现在要求县书记官记录所有事情，以便在法官下令将材料从其保管中移走时拥有清晰的记录。亚利桑那州的一名县官员表示，她已确保其投票机供应商备有额外库存，以便在联邦官员没收设备时做好准备。位于亚利桑那州与墨西哥边境的皮马县记录官加布里埃拉·卡萨雷斯-凯利（Gabriella Cázares-Kelly）表示，那里的律师已经起草好了限制令，以防移民特工出现。
State and local officials are on high alert. Colorado now requires county clerks to log everything so that they have clear records if a judge ever orders material removed from their custody. One county official in Arizona says she has made sure her voting-machine vendor has extra supply, so they are ready if the feds seize equipment. Gabriella Cázares-Kelly, the recorder in Pima county, along the Arizona-Mexico border, says lawyers there have restraining orders drafted if immigration agents show up.
“他们会插上几台设备，点击打印，然后亲自把文件送到等候的法官那里。”这种情况仍然极不可能发生。然而，官员们还必须应对选举是否认活动人士，他们例行公事地提交讨厌的公共记录申请和对选民登记的性质质疑。在佐治亚州等摇摆州，他们还成功在地方委员会中赢得职位，其中一些人旨在今年11月竞选全州职位。
“They would plug in a few things, hit print and physically run the document over to a waiting judge.”Such scenarios remain very unlikely. Yet officials must also contend with election-denial activists, who routinely file nuisance public-records requests and challenges to voter registrations. In swing states such as Georgia, they have also managed to win positions on local boards, with some aiming for statewide office this November.
亚利桑那州科科尼诺县的埃斯利尔·穆斯塔（Eslir Musta）表示，正当管理者为“如果发生……”的假想情况做准备时，依然存在一项不可忽视的任务，即搞好选举的基本运作机制，这本身就已经够具挑战性的了。就他而言，这意味着要筹备一支骡队，为居住在大峡谷底部的160名选民服务。
As administrators prepare for “what if” scenarios, there remains the not insubstantial task of getting the basic mechanics of elections right, which can be challenging enough, says Eslir Musta of Arizona’s Coconino county. In his case, that means prepping a mule caravan to serve the 160 voters who live at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.
只有半数美国人告诉民调机构，他们预期中期选举将是自由和公平的。无论是哪一院，选举结果的差距越小，11月份被利用的不确定性就越大。诉讼和重新计票如今已成为势均力敌选举的常态。今年，参议院的控制权可能取决于一两个州，其中包括一些众所周知计票缓慢的州，例如阿拉斯加。漫长或有争议的计票过程要求候选人具备耐心和克制。这些并不是特朗普先生所具备的属性。■
Just half of Americans tell pollsters they anticipate a free and fair midterms. The tighter the margin in either chamber, the more uncertainty there will be to exploit in November. Lawsuits and recounts are now standard in close races. This year, control of the Senate may come down to one or two states, including some that are famously slow to count, such as Alaska. A lengthy or contested count requires patience and restraint on the part of candidates. Those are not attributes known to Mr Trump.■