| There’s plenty to worry about on Election Day and potentially for the next four years. But election experts urge us to “panic responsibly,” in the words of Katie Harbath, CEO of the technology consultancy Anchor Change and a former Facebook public policy director. That means taking seriously what’s going wrong, but also focusing on what is going right with this election and our democracy. The experts are confident that we’ll have a rightful U.S. president on Inauguration Day, even if there are challenges and chaos along the way. Here’s a guide to what to expect, and how to freak out — but not too much — on Election Day and the next days and weeks. You probably won’t know who won the presidential election on Tuesday. It’s okay. If polls are correct about a tight race, it might take days before enough votes are counted for news organizations to project a winner. (A reminder: Media like the Associated Press estimate an outcome from preliminary vote counts and other information. Election officials tally the official results.) This lag time between Election Day and an official winner can be confusing, or spark 2020-style claims of fraud. But a healthy voting system is methodical. Recounts or legal challenges to vote tabulations could happen at several points in the next couple of months, said Kim Wyman, a former Washington secretary of state now with the nonprofit Bipartisan Policy Center. “This process is designed for challenges through the rule of law to give people the ability to question results,” Wyman said. “I expect both sides to use them and exhaust them.” There will be isolated problems with voting. It’s okay. In every election, people encounter issues at the polls, we make errors with our ballots (that voters can fix), or there are attempts to intimidate voters. Any problem is bad. But with more than 130 million votes cast for president, some glitches happen. “That’s not something to panic about, even though of course you want to get that problem fixed as soon as possible,” said Gowri Ramachandran, whose focus includes election security and disinformation at the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan law and policy group. If you encounter, see or hear about hiccups or confrontations at polling places, Ramachandran advises telling a poll worker or contacting local election officials from this directory. There will be election rumor mongering and lies. It’s not okay, but it will happen. False claims of a rigged election from former president Donald Trump and his allies are exhausting. Misleading claims put election workers and other citizens in danger. Some reported problems will be real, like the recent ballot box burning in two cities. In a perverse way, though, the garbage information soup and people glued to partisan beliefs helps protect the election outcome, said Nate Persily, an election law specialist at Stanford University. It’s difficult for any single falsehood to break through the noise and persuade many people to change their vote or stay away from the polls, he said. That’s grim — as is any pockets of election-related violence. Still, Persily said, “it’s important not to exaggerate the impact of a particular isolated incident. That may also have a chilling effect on voting.” You are the first line of defense against harmful information. You can’t stop powerful people from spewing lies or alter social media sites that stepped back from policing political information. You can control the information you spend time with and share helpful information with people who trust you. If something you see online makes you angry or scared, take a minute. Go through this helpful checklist from my colleagues. It’s also okay to limit your exposure to election information or watch silly TV. Find more distractions here. “Take care of yourself and have grace for others,” Harbath said. Don’t use artificial intelligence for election or voting information. “You should not use AI chatbots or AI search tools to get any kind of election information,” Ramachandran said. AI technologies, including Siri and Alexa, are wrong a lot. That’s why most AI companies will avoid giving election results. “We believe democracy is for humans,” said Mustafa Suleyman, who leads Microsoft’s consumer AI projects. (My colleague Heather Kelly suggested a modest way to use AI for voting research.) For information about when and where to vote, start at this website from state election officials. A Google search is helpful for election-related information, as are your trusted local or national news and county election websites that you can find from this directory. The good AI news is that so far, “deepfakes” or other AI-aided falsehoods don’t seem to be having a significant impact on the election, experts say. Tatum Hunter contributed to this report. | 
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