The conventions have convened, the debaters have debated and suddenly America’s election night does not seem so very far away. As the campaigns switch into overdrive, three things are clear—the race is getting uglier, the result is on a knife-edge and, unfortunately, America’s way of running elections is destined to create conflict. Our cover this week is about how all of these factors will collide after the vote on November 5th. 

Elections are meant to generate the consent of the people, even when their candidate loses. By this most basic standard, the presidential election of 2024 is unlikely to succeed.

We sought to capture the prospect of enduring dissent in America with a light aircraft flying a protest banner over the portico of the White House. But the execution is too cheerful. It is also implausible. Aptly for a country that is not at peace with itself, long before the plane got anywhere near 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue it would have been shot out of the sky.

Here the hats focus on partisanship. That helps explain today’s fight, certainly, but the peculiar vulnerabilities of America’s voting system also play a role. American elections demand patience and trust, yet the country comes joint last in the G7 on confidence in the judiciary and dead last on belief that its elections are honest. The two-month gap between voting and election certification in Congress is the most drawn-out anywhere. Complexity invites legal challenges, which incubate conspiracy theories. And America is the only proper presidential democracy in which the candidate who wins the most votes does not necessarily win power. That risks feeding a sense of grievance among the losers.

This goes to the other extreme. Not only is a ballot box a bit dull, but this one ignores the politics. If Mr Trump wins in a close race, Democrats could bring legal challenges in states where Ms Harris only just lost. Some of these might end up at the Supreme Court, where three justices appointed by Mr Trump would have to adjudicate their merits. Democrats have come to view the justices as Republican politicians in robes.

Although there would be rancour and anger, Ms Harris would probably concede, taking the wind out of any Democratic challenge. Not so Mr Trump. If he were to lose, the complexity of America’s voting system would collide with the MAGA conspiracy machine. Already, the Republican National Committee has filed more than 100 election lawsuits to create a paper trail in preparation to fight the result.

This gothic horror is more like it. Our guess is that a new “stop the steal” movement would fail to overturn the result—because MAGA Republicans in Congress would not muster the votes to do so and because the Supreme Court would, in fact, uphold the law. Yet the challenge could still succeed politically. One possible consequence is violence. Local police, the Secret Service and the FBI will have to prepare for protesters descending on statehouses, and for the risk of assassination attempts against lawmakers.

Lightning over the White House is dramatic, but spray-painting the Resolute desk is more precise. About 20% of American adults say that they are open to the possibility of using violence for a political end. In a large, well-armed country you do not need many of them to mean it for that threat to be scary. The Capitol will be so well policed in January 2025 that there will be no repeat of the riots on January 6th. But graffiti in the Oval is a clever echo of that grim day. 
 

For the final cover, we have ditched “Not my president”, which dates back to Mr Trump’s election in 2016, rather than the contested result in 2020. “Cheater”, which you see scrawled on the cars of adulterers, is more visceral. An intruder has left a can of paint on the floor. And we dithered over the chair—black, red, Chesterfield? Regrettably, our title, “A foregone confusion” is hard to work out if you don’t already know what we are writing about. But it was too good to waste, so we moved it onto the briefing that accompanies our editorial. For the cover, we opted for something more plain, “How ugly will it get?”

In January 2025, we expect America’s duly elected president to take office. Neither side will be able to force their candidate on the nation. But that is a minimal definition of democratic success. Each time people feel that an election lacks legitimacy, the day draws closer when one side or the other breaks the system rather than accepts the result.