The cities tried to hold off on declaring their own totals, but could only do it so long before it got suspicious,

Nice. Forces the cities to actually commit, rather than giving them the opportunity to see how many votes would need to be "found" to offset the rural lead.

Of course, you'd need to have decent security around the count totals, if your city Democrats are willing to try and breach security to get the number prior to the announcement that'd still be enough for them to work off...