Donald Trump doesn't want you to vote.

At least, his lack of faith in a US electoral system he calls "rigged" suggests he thinks your vote won't count. So why bother, right? His allegations of widespread voter fraud are baseless. But that hasn't stopped him from calling on his supporters to monitor polling places in communities he has deems suspect. That call has led to fears of violence and voter intimidation on Election Day.

Trump is none-too-subtle in describing where he thinks election fraud will go down. He told his supporters at a rally in Pennsylvania to go watch voters in "certain places" outside of their own communities, a piercing dog-whistle call to descend on non-white areas that vote heavily Democratic. And some backers have heard the summons.

People in Ohio talked openly about racially profiling would-be voters to intimidate them—a federal crime. A right-wing group best known for descending heavily armed on Ferguson, Missouri, during Black Lives Matter protests is calling on members to "go and hunt down" alleged vote fraud. In this climate of hostility deliberately stirred by Trump, the prospect of voting in some parts of the country this year may feel straight-up scary.

"We don't want the bad guys to know that we're out there," says Stewart Rhodes, founder of Oath Keepers, in a recruitment video. (The group is also known for backing rancher Cliven Bundy in his standoff with federal authorities.) "We want them to worry that they're being watched."

These promised armies of aggro poll protectors will almost certainly amount to nothing more than a fear-inducing fantasy come Election Day, not least because strict federal and state laws protect voters from intimidation. What is likelier (and scarier) is that a fantasy is all the threat needs to be to hurt voter turnout.

FUD and the Organization Problem

In sowing fear, uncertainty, and doubt (aka FUD) about the electoral process, Trump is engaging in a classic disinformation campaign. He doesn't have to inspire a single real Election Day vigilante (though if vigilantes do show up, many districts are ready with extra security). The threat of harassment or worse is what keeps voters from the polls, and in some places it might already be working. "This kind of unspecified threat is exactly the kind of thing that makes us all leery," says Catherine Turcer, a policy analyst for Common Cause Ohio, a nonpartisan public advocacy group. "It may turn off potential voters. And that would be tremendously sad."

From the beginning, Trump has shunned the very idea of getting out the vote. His campaign has largely outsourced his get-out-the-vote ground game to the Republican National Committee and state parties. These groups are now facing the choice of whether to stay fully committed to Trump or to tiptoe away from his campaign to protect down-ballot Senate and House candidates. House Speaker Paul Ryan made plain to the members of his party that they should do whatever is best for them. Translation? Dump Trump if he's hurting them in their local elections. So Trump's struggle right now is to get voters to the polls to vote for him.

If his campaign is having trouble for that, imagine how much more difficult it'll be to coordinate an illegal voter intimidation effort. "In terms of an organized effort on the Trump side, it's not clear that anything is going to materialize," says Rick Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Irvine. (The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for figures on how many volunteers have signed up on its site to act as a "Trump Election Observer.")

Though it's hard to judge how many unofficial groups may be planning to monitor polls in response to Trump's call, lackluster interest in lawful poll-watching indicates that Trump's comments have so far had little effect. The rules vary from state to state, but in general candidates and parties can have registered poll watchers in polling places to monitor proceedings and under strict rules challenge voter eligibility. In Florida, where election results are likely to be close, Trump's call hasn't exactly inspired an outpouring of poll-watching volunteers, according to election and party officials.

Meanwhile, a site seeking to organize a wave of volunteer pro-Trump "exit pollsters" has so far signed up only a few hundred people, according to the Huffington Post.

Prepared For the Worst

That enthusiasm gap hasn't stopped officials in hotly contested states from ramping up preparations for potential unrest on Election Day.

In Philadelphia, a city which Trump has singled out, without evidence, as a site of likely fraud, the district attorney's office is planning to staff what it calls its largest-ever election fraud task force to respond to complaints of intimidation and fraud. In the battleground state of Ohio, nonprofits are staffing up hotlines and sending out volunteers to ensure voters aren't harassed.

Still, the checks and balances states have put into place to ensure the integrity of elections makes the whole idea of freelance poll watchers seem like little more than hand-waving. Turns out, officials from both sides—and their lawyers—are deeply invested in making sure all the votes get cast and counted.

"We are a state that has that Noah's Ark thing," Turcer says. "The Democrats watch the Republicans, and the Republicans watch the Democrats. We do everything two by two."

One organized Election Day effort does appear to have caught on among Trump supporters: red shirts. Polling places typically prohibit electioneering onsite, meaning, among other things, no T-shirts advertising individual candidates. To get around that ban, supporters are urging Trump voters to wear red shirts as a kind of visual exit polling. If the result tilts to Hillary Clinton, the thinking seems to go, skeptics can point to oceans of red T-shirt wearers as evidence of overwhelming Trump support.

Everyone wearing the same color shirt in a fraught political climate has a historical precedent with which Trump might not want to associate himself. But on the continuum of potential Election Day problems, displays of solidarity with a candidate should under any normal circumstances hardly register as a problem.

Neither should the hyperbolic rhetoric of one of the candidates. The doubt Trump is seeking to lodge in the logistics of democracy is the definition of an anti-get-out-the-vote effort. It is an open effort to drain the election of energy and enthusiasm through fear, the apparent strategy of a campaign on the rocks. And though the polls suggest otherwise at the moment, it could work. All you have to do is stay home.