1. With a second coronavirus wave, Trump could issue a national quarantine that forces voters to stay home on Election Day. If Dr. Anthony Fauci’s prediction becomes reality and we see a second wave of sickness, death and overwhelmed emergency rooms in the fall, Trump can endeavor to order people to stay home under the Public Health Service Act, which gives the executive branch power to enforce quarantines.

Passed in 1944, the statute authorizes executive branch officials to take steps “necessary to prevent the introduction, transmission, or spread of communicable diseases … from one State … into another State or possession,” and allows the president, upon the recommendation of the Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary, to “provide for the apprehension, detention, or conditional release of individuals … for the purpose of preventing” the spread of disease.

But what about the states’ authority to manage pandemic outbreaks within their borders?

Well, under the regulations that implement the statute, the federal government can jump in whenever the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) “determines that the measures taken by health authorities of any State or possession … are insufficient to prevent the spread of any of the communicable diseases from such State or possession.”

Thus far, Trump has refused to orchestrate any serious federal response to COVID-19, sloughing off the problem to the states. He’d be hard-pressed to change his tune in the fall. A federal order would also stoke widespread anger and lawsuits. But the power is his.

2. Trump and Congress could pull the plug on U.S. postal service (USPS) funding. Without a functioning postal service, states’ efforts to expand access to voting by mail will become futile. Trump has already threatened to veto any Covid-19 legislation that includes bailout funding for the USPS which, according to the Government Accountability Office, is in an “overall financial condition [that] is deteriorating and unsustainable.” In March, the White House killed a bipartisan bill to give the postal service $13 billion, arguing that it must increase its rates and make other changes first. The White House and Republicans in Congress are unlikely to support any loan that does not include changes such as USPS raising its rates or using more outside contractors. Without any compromise between the parties, USPS has said money could run out as early as this summer, and Trump, who has called the agency a “joke,” has been in no rush to find a political solution.

3. Trump could encourage supporters to show up at polling stations to prevent “voter fraud.” In 1981, the Republican National Committee (RNC) came under a consent decree for practices that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) alleged were violations of the Voting Rights Act. Among those allegations, the DNC said the RNC hired off-duty police officers with “National Ballot Security Task Force” armbands to patrol majority-minority precincts. The bullying tactics continued through the following decade, requiring two decree modifications in response to other means of voter intimidation. In 1990, for example, a court found that the North Carolina Republican Party sent 150,000 mostly black voters discouraging postcards warning of strict residency requirements and jailtime for voter fraud.

The extended consent decree expired in 2017. Although it only applied to the RNC, this history suggests that as states continue to expand early voting as an additional response to Covid-19, Trump could encourage MAGA supporters to show up at polling sites to chill valid participation. This threat is particularly salient for minority voters who—even if fully documented—might fear Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

4. Trump could pressure officials in his base states to change voting rules to make it harder, not easier, to vote during Covid. With some exceptions, Republican governors of red states that voted for Trump in 2016 were less likely to issue stay-at-home orders—which Trump has publicly disfavored—than their blue-state counterparts. The fewest restrictions were in South Dakota, Idaho, Missouri, Utah and Wisconsin, a perennial swing state. Given this recent history, it’s easy to imagine that if Trump continues to warn of a “rigged election” and call for voting restrictions in response to states’ post-Covid voting changes, Republican governors and secretaries of state would likewise fall in line with what the president suggests.

More specifically, under pressure from or allegiance to Trump, Republican secretaries of states, governors or Republican-dominated state legislatures could take last-minute steps to purge registered voters, close polling places or shorten early voting hours, restrict voting by mail or make other changes that could inch Trump across the finish line irrespective of the legitimate needs and wants of individual voters.

It wouldn’t be the first time that politicians tweaked election rules and affected the results, even in races where they had a clear personal stake in the outcome. In 2000, Florida’s secretary of state and co-chair of George W. Bush’s presidential campaign in Florida, Katherine Harris, certified Bush as the popular vote winner after halting a recount that was prompted by an exceedingly slim, 537-vote margin over his opponent, Al Gore. A lawsuit famously ensued regarding the counting of confusing punch-card ballots marred by “hanging” or “dimpled” chads. Harris’ certification was overturned by the Florida Supreme Court, but ultimately endorsed by the U.S. Supreme Court, thus deciding the presidential election.

In 2016, Georgia’s secretary of state Brian Kemp—a self-proclaimed “Trump conservative”—refused to recuse himself from the role of secretary of state and chief election official when he announced his run for the governorship. Under Kemp, over 1.5 million voters—or 10.6 percent of Georgia voters—were removed from the rolls in the two years prior to the election, and 214 polling places were shuttered, mostly in neighborhoods with predominantly minority residents. Just days before the election, Kemp reportedly put 53,000 voter registration applications on hold, reasoning that the names on the applications were not an “exact match” with information in other state databases because of hyphens, accents, typos, and the like. Kemp won the race by approximately 54,000 votes over Democrat Stacey Abrams.

5. Trump’s party will continue to sue states that try to make voting easier in order to tie up ballot measures in court so that, by the time things are resolved, it’s too late. Republicans have reportedly amassed a $20 million war chest for use in challenging state efforts to expand access to the polls due to the coronavirus. So far, multiple suits are already pending across the country over whether Americans should be able to vote by mail or instead risk their health by braving the physical polls during the pandemic. In Texas, the state supreme court recently sided with Republican attorney general Ken Paxton in ruling that “a voter’s lack of immunity to Covid-19, without more, is not a ‘disability’” that justifies voting by mail.

Although the success of such suits under various states’ laws is uncertain, what is certain is that litigation takes time, and as those lawsuits wend way their way through the court system, measures designed to make voting more accessible in the midst of the coronavirus health crisis could be put on hold through Election Day. Tying up expanded voting measures in court through the fall is itself a win if the goal is to minimize the number of people who cast ballots in November—people whom Trump fans believe will most likely vote against him and in favor of his presumptive opponent, Joe Biden.

Voting is the most precious of all rights under the U.S. Constitution because, without it, all other rights become virtually meaningless. Because a government unaccountable to the people is not a government by the people, every American, regardless of politics, should watch what Trump does to make voting more difficult.