Donald Trump's effort to cushion the landing of what increasingly looks like a large electoral loss goes something like this:

1. Reject polling as inaccurate. The guy who spent five minutes in every speech from July 2015 to March 2016 talking about his poll numbers has recently begun disparaging what the same pollsters see now. At times Trump offers a vague "this is a movement" explanation for why the pollsters may be missing something; at other times, he and his team imply bias.

Trump's goal? Make the race seem closer than it is.

2. Imply that voter fraud is rampant and substantial. Trump's meandering description of the election as rigged offers different villains on different days: Sometimes it's the media, sometimes it's House Speaker Paul Ryan, oftentimes it's Hillary Clinton. But he also frequently points to supposed voter fraud, a claim for which there's no evidence now and for which there's never been any evidence on a large scale. You can see how this plays into the first point: If people think that the vote is close but Clinton ends up winning big, clearly something untoward happened.

Trump's goal? Make a Clinton victory seem suspect.

But what happens when, on Election Day, there isn't obvious evidence of fraud? When exit polls conducted with voters show an overwhelming preference for Clinton (if that should happen)? Well, you're just going to need to have your own folks out there digging up fraud. And you're going to need your own exit polls.

Trump's campaign is already planning on the former. They've been signing people up to be "election observers" since August, asking people to go to poll sites and keep an eye on things. From a political campaign standpoint, this is an unwise way to use volunteer resources: Instead of contacting or turning out voters, you're getting people to keep an eye out for ghosts in places near where they live — which are probably therefore more Trump-friendly anyway. If the Republican Party gets involved, it's even more problematic. Under a long-standing consent decree, the GOP is prohibited from participating in programs that aim to intimidate voters.

That's pretty clearly what Trump's effort would result in: his supporters challenging voters at the polling place. One Trump supporter explained to the Boston Globe how he saw it working.

"I'll look for … well, it's called racial profiling. Mexicans. Syrians. People who can't speak American," he said. "I'm going to go right up behind them. I'll do everything legally. I want to see if they are accountable. I'm not going to do anything illegal. I'm going to make them a little bit nervous."

Intimidating voters is a federal crime.

Trump's effort might be bolstered with some outside help. Roger Stone, a longtime ally of Trump's who now runs an outside political action committee, plans to run "exit polls" in hundreds of precincts — mostly focused on urban areas in swing states.

The way exit polling normally works is that the pollsters identify precincts across the country that offer insight into how the state will vote. Volunteers are trained to administer the surveys, which are usually conducted on paper and include a slew of demographic questions. The goal is to get a sense of who's coming out to vote and why, with the results of those surveys then weighted against the actual results.

Stone is uninterested in using his "exit polls" to determine who's going to win a state. Earlier this year, Stone told Brietbart.com that voting machines are often rigged — a claim for which there's no evidence.

Trump "needs to say for example, today would be a perfect example: 'I am leading in Florida. The polls all show it,' " Stone said. " 'If I lose Florida, we will know that there's voter fraud. If there's voter fraud, this election will be illegitimate, the election of the winner will be illegitimate, we will have a constitutional crisis, widespread civil disobedience, and the government will no longer be the government.' " That was in August; Trump is no longer leading in Florida.

Stone's clear goal is to find evidence for that voter fraud — and/or to present "data" suggesting that the vote totals in precincts were not what the official tallies claim. It's important to reinforce how exit polls work: They are weighted against the results specifically because the results in a precinct often skew away from the overall voter pool. Younger people are more likely to complete exit polls, which is one reason that Bernie Sanders often did better in unweighted exit polls than in the final results during the primaries.

"Evidence" of voter fraud is surprisingly easy to come by, in the same way that it's easy to see shapes in clouds. If you're looking for fraud, you'll see a mechanical glitch or a weird comment or suspicious behavior as evidence of something untoward happening. If you go into a polling place looking for fraud, you're probably going to find something that can be spun that way, just as if you're looking for evidence that Hillary Clinton cheats during debates, you'll find something that, in your mind, reinforces that idea. Stone's team will almost certainly be looking for anything that supports the idea that Trump actually won.

All of this is why Team Trump's effort to frame a loss in advance is unlike anything we've seen before. This is a deliberate push to ensure that they have the ability to question the result, regardless of what that result may be. Will Trump actually raise doubts? He answered that in the final debate Wednesday.

"I will tell you at the time" if the results are acceptable, he said. "I'll keep you in suspense. OK?"