WASHINGTON>> This presidential election — the first since the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol — will be a stress test of the new systems and guardrails that Congress put in place to ensure America’s long tradition of the peaceful transfer of presidential power.

As Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris race toward the finish, pro-democracy advocates and elected officials are preparing for a volatile period in the aftermath of Election Day, as legal challenges are filed, bad actors spread misinformation and voters wait for Congress to affirm the results.

“One of the unusual characteristics of this election is that so much of the potential danger and so many of the attacks on the election system are focused on the post-election period,” said Wendy Weiser, vice president for democracy at the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice.

After the Jan. 6 attack, Congress set out to shore up the process and prevent a repeat of that unprecedented period when Trump, joined by some GOP allies in Congress, refused to concede defeat to President Joe Biden.

Trump spent months pushing dozens of failed legal cases before sending his supporters to the U.S. Capitol, where they disrupted the electoral count with a bloody riot. He faces a federal indictment for the scheme, which included slates of fake electors from states falsely claiming he won.

While the new Electoral Count Reform Act approved by Congress has clarified the post-election processes — to more speedily resolve legal challenges and reinforce that the vice president has no ability to change the election outcome on Jan. 6 — the new law is by no means ironclad.

Much depends on the people involved, from the presidential winners and losers to the elected leaders in Congress and the voters across America putting their trust in the democratic system that has stood for more than 200 years.

A series of deadlines between Election Day on Nov. 5 and Inauguration Day on Jan. 20 are built into the process, once routine steps that are now important milestones that can be met — or missed.

States are required to certify their electors by Dec. 11 in advance of a meeting of the Electoral College, which is set this year on Dec. 17.

The new Congress convenes Jan. 3 to elect a House speaker and swear in lawmakers. Then, on Jan. 6, Congress holds a joint session to accept the electoral count from the states — a typically ceremonial session presided over by the vice president.

To fortify the process in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack, the Electoral Count Reform Act instituted several changes intended to shore up the process and make sure the disputes are resolved by the time the Congress meets. Legal challenges to the results are to be more quickly resolved, under an expedited timeline for judicial review, all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary. If a county refuses to certify its results, as some did during the 2022 midterm elections, the governor has more authority to certify the state’s tally.

On Jan. 6, the law now requires 20% of the House and Senate to challenge a state’s electors to force a vote on rejecting them, rather than a single member threshold from each chamber.