Election officials around the country have hardened their systems, have reinforced defenses,

have increased auditing.

There are backup plans and backups of the backups for the things that usually go wrong in elections.

The big question to me was if Donald Trump disputes the election result and tries to overturn it,

which I'm quite certain he will if he loses, can the system withstand that?

Can the system hold?

And I believe it can't.

I believe that he will try if he loses to overturn the results and he will fail.

I'm John Favreau.

I'm Max Fisher.

And you just heard from today's guest Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Barton Gellman.

If you know who Barton Gellman is, even the name might make you a little anxious.

He wrote a piece right before the 2020 election that basically predicted Trump's attempted coup.

If you don't know who Barton Gelman is, you're probably anxious anyway because the 2024 election is almost here.

And if you're not anxious, please give us some of whatever you're taking.

Just mail it right to us.

I will take triple. In the meantime, we thought we'd do an offline election anxiety special.

So we're going to talk through some news and then chat about all the ways we might be able to temper our anxiety heading into election day and potentially beyond. We've got to get through it.

Then you'll hear my interview with Barton, who's now a senior advisor at the Brennan Center for Justice,

where he's been focused on building safeguards to protect democracy and fighting attempts to steal the 2024 election.

We talked about why he thinks that this time, our votes will be safe, but maybe not America if Trump wins.

Yeah, there's some real, some real good news,

...