With each pass­ing week, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump tweets out more warn­ings that the mail-in elec­tion results in Novem­ber will be over­whelmed by fraud and for­eign interference.

Those remarks are flat-out false, experts agree, although they do antic­i­pate vary­ing amounts of non-mali­cious tur­bu­lence through­out the 45 states — and Wash­ing­ton D.C. — that don’t con­duct their elec­tions by mail.

Mail-In Vot­ing is already prov­ing to be a cat­a­stroph­ic dis­as­ter. Even test­ing areas are way off. The Dems talk of for­eign influ­ence in vot­ing, but they know that Mail-In Vot­ing is an easy way for for­eign coun­tries to enter the race. Even beyond that, there’s no accu­rate count!

— Don­ald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 30, 2020

“He’s right in say­ing it’s a mess. He’s wrong in say­ing it’s going to be mas­sive­ly fraud­u­lent,” said Mark Rom, asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of gov­ern­ment and pub­lic pol­i­cy at George­town University.

The rest of the coun­try is expect­ing mas­sive turnout by absen­tee bal­lot in Novem­ber — more than half of all votes cast in most states — amid efforts to avoid the coro­n­avirus, said Michael Corn­field, asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of polit­i­cal man­age­ment at George Wash­ing­ton University.

“There’s a surge com­ing. It’s like a hur­ri­cane, and it’s time to lay the sand­bags,” Corn­field said. “The next few weeks are the time that can real­ly make a dif­fer­ence between mas­sive mul­ti­state prob­lems and man­age­able problems.”

Many elec­tion offi­cials have been tak­ing that advice. Den­ver Coun­ty Clerk Paul López said his office is con­stant­ly host­ing clerks from oth­er states who want to learn how to secure­ly hold elec­tions with mail-in ballots.

Still, prob­lems dur­ing the pri­maries sug­gest some dif­fi­cul­ties are unavoid­able in states that are unac­cus­tomed to high num­bers of peo­ple vot­ing by mail. A recent Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry in New York serves as a good exam­ple.

“They didn’t have the results for six weeks,” Rom said. “There were chal­lenges to so many bal­lots, elec­tion offi­cials were not being transparent.”

Some bal­lots weren’t post­marked as required and oth­ers were improp­er­ly sealed, Rom said. Those prob­lems and more result­ed in a large num­ber of dis­card­ed votes.

But those are logis­ti­cal errors, not mali­cious ones, Rom said.

Joce­lyn Bucaro, Denver’s direc­tor of elec­tions, said elec­tion offi­cials should break every step of the vot­ing process down to its most basic elements.

“They need to have real­ly clear pro­ce­dures and real­ly good time esti­mates for how long it takes them to do every process,” Bucaro said.

Offi­cials should ensure bal­lots are easy for vot­ers to under­stand, Bucaro said. They must also under­stand whether state laws allow clerk’s offices to open envelopes and count bal­lots ear­ly. Alert­ing cit­i­zens when their votes are count­ed — if allowed in a giv­en state — can give them con­fi­dence in the process.

Aaron Ammons, the clerk for Cham­paign Coun­ty, Illi­nois, said he’s work­ing to put as much of Bucaro’s advice in place as pos­si­ble. He vis­it­ed three Col­orado clerk’s offices dur­ing the state’s June 30 pri­ma­ry, end­ing the evening in Den­ver with López’s staff.

“I learned the impor­tance of a sig­nif­i­cant invest­ment in the elec­tion process is well worth it,” Ammons said.

He hit the ground run­ning back in Illi­nois, invest­ing in a mail sorter and open­er, col­or-cod­ed sort­ing trays, and drop box­es, but said he needs more mon­ey from the state or fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to fin­ish the job.

Those changes and more are impor­tant because he’s expect­ing about 50,000 vot­ers in Cham­paign Coun­ty to cast their bal­lots by mail in Novem­ber, 10 times normal.

Ammons is not alone. Corn­field point­ed to a July report by a con­sor­tium of pro­fes­sors from Har­vard, Rut­gers, North­west­ern and North­east­ern universities.

“The expect­ed jump is stag­ger­ing,” Corn­field said.

For exam­ple, 27% of vot­ers in Flori­da sub­mit­ted bal­lots by mail in the 2016 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, the report says, and that num­ber is expect­ed to jump to 67% this year. Bal­lots cast by mail in Wis­con­sin and Penn­syl­va­nia are expect­ed to increase by 56% and 54%, respec­tive­ly, the report says.

That’s why it’s impor­tant for states to solve as many logis­ti­cal prob­lems as pos­si­ble now, Corn­field said.

Fail­ure to smooth out the new pro­ce­dures is the real dan­ger, Rom said — not the “mas­sive fraud” Trump has predicted.

The president’s asser­tions — which aren’t backed by evi­dence — only under­mine vot­er con­fi­dence, said Col­orado Sec­re­tary of State Jena Gris­wold a Demo­c­rat who fre­quent­ly cor­rects Trump’s false com­ments on Twit­ter. She invit­ed him to take a clos­er look at Colorado’s elec­tion system.

Vote by mail for all can be done by adopt­ing the Col­orado elec­tion mod­el: vot­ers reg­is­ter to vote, are mailed a bal­lot, and then bal­lots are returned via mail, drop box, or at an in-per­son polling cen­ter. https://t.co/DqoPDzANCh

— Jena Gris­wold (@JenaGriswold) August 5, 2020

“My DMs are open,” Gris­wold said.

Dear @jack, @realdonaldtrump is tweet­ing dan­ger­ous lies about the upcom­ing elec­tion. His lies about vote-by-mail vio­late @Twitter’s polices and should be removed. https://t.co/JLOoyONlKL

— Jena Gris­wold (@JenaGriswold) July 30, 2020

Cer­tain­ly for­eign gov­ern­ments are work­ing to influ­ence the 2020 elec­tion, Gris­wold and Corn­field acknowl­edged. But those tac­tics come in the form of social media cam­paigns and spread­ing disinformation.

Anoth­er con­cern could be bal­lot har­vest­ing, said for­mer Sec­re­tary of State Wayne Williams. That’s where sup­port­ers of one par­ty col­lect and dis­card vot­ers’ absen­tee bal­lots in a dis­trict that leans strong­ly the oth­er way.

Elec­tion offi­cials say vot­ers should always cast their own bal­lot — whether by drop box, mail or in per­son at a clerk’s office — to avoid that risk.