Trump is laying the groundwork to challenge an election he might lose. Pennsylvania is ground zero.

PHILADELPHIA — Donald Trump is turning Pennsylvania into ground zero for preemptive claims of a rigged election.

When voters in Bucks County, a key suburb outside Philadelphia, faced long lines and early cutoffs while trying to request and cast mail ballots in person, Trump aides and allies not only successfully sued to extend the on-demand voting period, but also seized on it as evidence of voter suppression and intimidation.

When Lancaster County said it was reviewing voter registration applications for possible fraud, Trump falsely claimed that there were thousands of “fake ballots.” York County said it had received thousands of voter materials it was reviewing — which, Trump said, were “THOUSANDS of potentially FRAUDULENT applications.”

If Trump loses the state, these are the bricks that could make up the foundation of his attempts to overturn that loss.

“Pennsylvania is cheating, and getting caught, at large scale levels rarely seen before,” Trump posted without evidence to his social media site Wednesday morning. And he continued Thursday: “We caught them CHEATING BIG in Pennsylvania. Must announce and PROSECUTE, NOW!,” he posted. “Who would have ever thought that our Country is so CORRUPT?”

Both Democratic and Republican Pennsylvania election officials said the election is safe and secure. But for Trump and his allies, every incident, no matter how big or small, real or perceived, is evidence of a plot to rig the vote in the nation’s biggest battleground state.

In these final days before Election Day, they are blowing up allegations of malfeasance, administrative mistakes by election officials and claims of error in Pennsylvania into five-alarm fires. It’s not just that they’re raising concerns — and scoring some victories in court — as both parties have done for decades. It’s that Trump holds them up as preemptive proof the election is rigged against him.

“Our election integrity team has been notified of legitimate instances of voter fraud and voter suppression by real voters on the ground,” Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “While the media labels these examples as conspiracy theories, Team Trump and the [Republican National Committee] are taking every allegation seriously to ensure a safe and secure election for ALL Americans, regardless of who they are voting for.”

That waterfall of allegations in Pennsylvania in recent days builds upon years of Trump undermining trust in elections. Following the 2020 election the former president and his allies sowed chaos in Pennsylvania, a focal point of his attempt to retain control of the White House. He and his allies unleashed a torrent of misinformation about the state’s election; asked the Supreme Court to throw out its results; and orchestrated a slate of fake electors, even after some original electors in the state balked at the plan.

Local election officials became the subject of threats, abuse and harassment — and some, including in Philadelphia, had to have police protection. Two men were arrested on gun charges outside Philadelphia’s vote counting site after driving up from Virginia.

Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt — a Republican — in a press briefing Wednesday called the heated rhetoric an effort to “manufacture outrage,” and pointed to high levels of misinformation around voting in the state, without naming names.

“We had a free and fair, safe and secure election. And we will again respect the will of the people, whatever their choices are in this election,” Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro said of Trump’s efforts to overturn the last presidential election. “As for Trump and his rhetoric: This is just a carbon-copy job of what he did back in 2020.”

Trump and his allies target Pennsylvania, again

The Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee have highlighted sometimes routine election administration decisions as proof that he is being attacked.

One of the flashpoints is people trying to vote early. Pennsylvania does not have traditional in-person early voting, like other states do — a compromise agreed to years ago by Republican legislators. But counties allow voters to request mail ballots in person, fill them out and return them in one visit to their local elections offices.

That has led to long lines in some situations, as offices not built to accommodate voting are rushed with people, and some counties have cut off those lines before the end of the business day. Republican candidates have argued that the in-person mail voting process should be treated like Election Day voting.

There is no statutory requirement to keep offices open late — and voters who were turned away could, local officials emphasize, still have requested a ballot online or submitted the application in person and picked it up later. In addition, the Department of State said voters in line at 5 p.m. on the last day were still allowed to request a ballot.

But turning away those voters is intentional “voter suppression” and an attempt to rig the election against Trump, according to the former president and his allies. “Stay in line, don’t let anyone turn you away and silence your voice,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “We need to make it TOO BIG TO RIG!“

Republicans successfully sued Bucks County to extend in-person mail voting there through Friday, in what RNC co-chair Michael Whatley described as a “landmark victory” on a call with reporters Wednesday afternoon. (The original deadline for mail ballot requests was Tuesday, and Bucks County officials said they had cut off their lines because they had become too long to serve every voter before the 5 p.m. deadline.)

“Today’s big victory really represents a defeat for the Democrats’ voter-suppression efforts,” Leavitt, the Trump spokesperson, said on the call.

Diane Ellis-Marseglia, a Democratic Bucks County commissioner, said that interest in on-demand in-person mail voting skyrocketed this year.

“Suddenly there was a rush that had never happened before,” she said. “So of course people wouldn’t be prepared for that.”

Trump has also elevated allegations of fraud, even when election officials are the ones catching potential problems and publicizing them.

Lancaster County announced it was reviewing 2,500 voter registration applications turned in right before the deadline after spotting possible problems with some of them. In Trump’s telling, that meant there were “fake ballots” — which is not true. The county district attorney’s office said Wednesday its investigation is ongoing, and have found numerous signs of potential fraud in the registrations.

He also called out York County for receiving “THOUSANDS of potentially FRAUDULENT” voter registrations. The reality: A third-party group dropped off about 3,000 voter registration forms and mail ballot applications, at least some of which were legitimate, and the county is going through them to parse out any suspicious ones and prevent any possible fraud.

“WHAT IS GOING ON IN PENNSYLVANIA???” Trump posted to Truth Social. “Law Enforcement must do their job, immediately!!! WOW!!!”

What’s going on, one Pennsylvania election official said, is counties’ processes are working. “What you’re seeing is you have dedicated election officials who are flagging suspicious activities, registrations in this case, and I think it proves that the system works,” said the official, who was granted anonymity to avoid being targeted.

Trump has spread election conspiracy theories for years

Last Friday, the former president took to social media to issue a “CEASE & DESIST” order, promising “long term prison sentences” for “Corrupt Election Officials” and others looking to repeat the “Cheating and Skullduggery” of 2020.

“WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law,” he wrote.

It’s a pattern throughout Trump’s entire political career — never admit a loss, because surely it was stolen from him. The 2016 Iowa caucuses that Ted Cruz won? Rigged against him and should have been redone. Losing the 2016 popular vote? He actually won it “if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.”

Things reached a peak in 2020, when Trump cast doubt on the trustworthiness of American elections both before and after his loss — which stoked a nationwide fight to overturn the results, and ultimately fueled the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the Capitol.

Election officials from both parties have said that 2020 was a secure election and have repeatedly stressed that officials are prepared for this year’s contest, which is already well underway. Tens of millions of Americans have already voted.

Mistakes — sometimes serious ones — can and will happen, election workers and experts acknowledge, and bad actors can try to take advantage of the system. But fraud is rare and small, not routine and election-shifting.

“A national presidential election is not one election, it’s almost 10,000 little elections all over the country, run by hundreds of thousands of professional election workers and millions of volunteers,” said David Becker, a critic of Trump’s lies about elections and the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research.

“It would be irrational to expect that this would go off perfectly. There’s always a little bit of human error,” he said. But, he emphasized, the electoral system is built with multiple redundancies and checks “to make sure that the right outcome has still been achieved.”

Democrats have seen this playbook before

Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) said in an interview that the election is “secure” and dismissed Trump’s attempt to undermine it as an act of desperation.

“It’s just a big eye roll, and it’s pathetic,” he said. “If they thought they were going to win and they were feeling confident, they wouldn’t be doing this kind of shit.”

Fetterman downplayed Trump’s ability to interfere with the election, pointing to the fact that Trump is no longer in the White House. Both Shapiro and Fetterman have hit back at Trump.

“Republican and Democratic clerks of election made sure in Pennsylvania, back in 2020, that we had a free and fair, safe and secure election, and they’re doing that again,” Shapiro told reporters Wednesday while campaigning for Democratic gubernatorial nominee Joyce Craig in New Hampshire. “I’ve got a lot of confidence in our system.”

In Erie County, where the state Democratic Party has sued — without the accompanying fanfare — over concerns about mail ballot deliverability, former county Democratic Party Chair Jim Wertz said he has “the utmost faith in our election office.”

But he remains concerned about the cumulative effect of Republicans overblowing process issues ahead of Election Day.

“All of these things together are creating a perfect storm for the election challenges,” Wertz said.

Zach Montellaro reported from Washington, Holly Otterbein reported from Philadelphia, and Lisa Kashinsky reported from Concord, New Hampshire.