During a town hall this afternoon, a former supporter of Donald Trump, alarmed by the former president’s handling of Jan. 6, gave Trump the opportunity to win back his vote. Trump turned it down.

Instead, the former president offered a version of the storming of the Capitol out of step with reality and said it was OK that the questioner might not vote for him. The event, in which Trump faced questions from undecided Hispanic voters, was the latest in a media blitz by both candidates to lure votes from their opponents’ bases in a close race.

Trump has recently declined to mollify skeptics, instead escalating threats to opponents that he has deemed the “enemy.” Trump has even threatened to turn the military on Americans because they oppose his candidacy — a level of retribution never before publicly discussed by a presidential candidate.

Your questions:

We’re asking readers what they’d like to know about the election. Today, we gave one to my colleague Adam Liptak, who covers the Supreme Court.

What scenario could lead to the presidential race being contested where the Supreme Court of the United States would get involved? — Stephanie, Calabasas, CA.

Adam: There are countless ways in which the outcome of the election could effectively be decided by the Supreme Court, but almost all of them hinge on three factors in combination: a very tight race in one or more battleground states that could determine the national result where voting procedures are open to plausible legal challenge.

All those factors were present in Bush v. Gore, the 2000 decision that delivered the presidency to George W. Bush. They may recur this year, but that is hardly certain, as the 2020 election demonstrated. That year, in a brisk and dismissive order, the Supreme Court refused to throw out the results in four battleground states that Donald Trump had lost. There is little reason to think the court is eager to get involved this year, either.