CNN —
This election cycle, with a former president at the top of the Republican Party as he sought to overturn his 2020 defeat, has seen an unprecedented amount of pre-election litigation, with Republicans involved in 130 lawsuits. It is advertised as.
Republicans’ aggressive approach to the courts aligns with former President Donald Trump’s strategy of using the courts to preemptively cast doubt on the 2024 outcome. Republicans have pushed back against the criticism, saying they are focused on clarifying the rules and recognize that election officials must follow the law.
Democrats similarly rushed to court to defend election policies under attack from Republicans and fend off Republican efforts to remove eligible Americans from voter rolls.
But legally, the onslaught of Republican-led lawsuits has done little to change the status quo around voting and election administration, said Leah, an election law expert at the liberal-leaning Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. Mr. Turin says.
“If you measure success in terms of positive outcomes and wins, this effort was basically a complete failure,” Tulin said. “Many of these cases are still pending, but they haven’t actually moved. We don’t expect most of them to move, and we don’t expect a clear favorable outcome before the election.”
A spokesperson for the Republican National Committee defended the party’s record in court, telling CNN that the party’s “unprecedented election integrity operation is committed to upholding the law and protecting every legal vote.” Ta.
“We will thwart Democratic plans to dismantle election security and continue to fight for fair and transparent elections for all Americans,” said Press Secretary Claire Zink.
Here are the biggest issues and lawsuits litigated in the week before Election Day.
Mail-in voting rules have been one of the most hotly litigated issues heading into the 2020 pandemic election, with legal battles continuing into 2024 in some battleground states.
Some courts have balked at mail-in voting-related litigation in key states, as the Supreme Court has signaled it is wary of court rulings that change voting policies so close to Election Day.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit by the RNC that sought to end a practice called curing that allows voters to fix defects in mail-in ballots, while a lawsuit brought by voting rights groups challenging the mail-in voting requirements was also rejected. The appropriate date will be marked on the ballot.
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Republicans are currently taking the fight over provisional voting to the U.S. Supreme Court. This is another opportunity for someone to have their vote counted by directly casting a ballot that will be properly vetted and counted after a mail-in ballot is rejected due to a technical glitch. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court said counties must count provisional ballots.
Michigan Republicans secured a partial victory in a lawsuit that was settled on the condition that Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson provide more guidance on how to verify mail-in ballots.
Republicans lost at the trial level in lawsuits filed in both state and federal courts in Nevada challenging the acceptance of ballots that arrived after Election Day, including those without postmarks. .
Republican appeals from the federal case will not be heard before the election, but the state court case (which focuses on the counting of unpostmarked ballots that arrived within three days after the election) will be subject to a Nevada Supreme Court ruling. There is a possibility that it will be lowered. Please come anytime.
But Republicans won a major victory in a federal appeals court stemming from a lawsuit filed against the state of Mississippi alleging that counting mail-in ballots that arrived after Election Day violated federal law.
The decision has no immediate impact on election practices, as the 5th Circuit did not block Mississippi’s policy, leaving it up to the trial judge to decide next steps. . But Republicans say the ruling will strengthen their case as they seek to challenge late-arriving ballots in states where the outcome of critical races could be largely determined. It may be pointed out.
The legal battle over certifying the election results has become a focal point for both parties in recent weeks, with Republicans pushing to give local officials more leeway in finalizing the results.
The most dramatic battle was in Georgia, where the state’s 16 electoral votes are crucial to Mr. Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. In a lawsuit brought by Democrats and others, the court ruled that Trump allies would change the certification process, including requiring local officials to conduct a “reasonable investigation” before certifying results. They blocked rules passed at the last minute.
Those changes were immediately challenged in court, with state judges saying local officials cannot delay or refuse to certify election results, giving them the legal right to reject results based on suspicions of fraud or abuse. This dealt a blow to conservative efforts to
In a separate case involving the certification rule, the state Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a Republican request for immediate reinstatement of the rule, ensuring that it would not apply this cycle.
Democrats have warned that new certification rules could force local election officials to delay or outright refuse to certify election results as they investigate allegations of fraud or wrongdoing. Ta. Key Republican state officials, including Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, also opposed the new rules.
In the battleground state of Arizona, a federal judge last month blocked a new regulation that would have directed the secretary of state to ignore county election results if local officials have not finalized them and proceed with the state’s election campaign. , the Republicans won. County votes.
Republicans have focused their political messaging on the alleged threat of non-citizens (an extremely rare event, according to research), making it lawful to remove alleged non-citizens from their lists. It has become a flashpoint.
The Republican National Committee and other conservative groups believe that election officials are not doing a good job of removing noncitizens and other ineligible voters from voter rolls while defending state laws that tighten ID requirements. It has filed lawsuits in several states alleging that it does not.
Arizona secured a partial victory with the Supreme Court’s ruling that it can impose documentation requirements for proof of citizenship on people who use the state registration form to register to vote, but the high court ruled that rejected the RNC’s request to expand to people who use . That means people without documentation of citizenship can vote in presidential elections, but not in state or local elections.
But conservative lawsuits focused on voter purges have largely not received much attention. In Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and Michigan, judges have dismissed lawsuits that challenged the registration of certain voters or claimed that voter rolls were not properly maintained.
A major hurdle for conservatives is a federal law that prohibits organized list maintenance programs within 90 days of an election.
The law was a victory in a lawsuit by outside liberals and voting rights groups (sometimes joined by President Joe Biden’s Justice Department) against states that called for voter purges within 90 days. Voting rights advocates also point out that naturalized citizens are often caught up in these purges because of flaws in the citizenship data used.
Federal judges in Alabama and Virginia have blocked each state’s purge program to begin the removal process within 90 days.
Republican state officials have launched an emergency appeal in Virginia, but President Trump is trying to exaggerate the ruling for political gain.
Tulin, of the Brennan Center for Justice, said many of this year’s lawsuits were filed to serve as “predicates or substitutes” for conservative litigants to cite in post-election lawsuits if Trump loses. He said he thought that.
“Then they can go back and point it out and say, ‘Look, you said this problem has existed before,’ and that can add a kind of credibility to post-election litigation,” she said. said.
Police pollsters and observers
Republicans have filed multiple lawsuits over how election officials plan to monitor and select volunteer poll workers who help with specific tasks at polling places and poll watchers who monitor election operations. is happening. The lawsuit addresses largely baseless claims from Trump and his allies in 2020 that Republicans were not given adequate access to monitor the election.
So far, lawsuits targeting the 2024 election have had only limited success. A Republican lawsuit led to a settlement with Detroit election officials that confirmed the presence of at least one Republican poll watcher in each precinct. But in Wisconsin, a judge rejected Racine’s lawsuit to force election officials to hire more Republican poll workers.
Some legal challenges have targeted policies enacted since the tense 2020 crisis to address harassment and intimidation of poll workers, and the record in those cases is mixed. The Nevada Republican Party’s challenge to a 2023 law banning harassment of poll workers has failed.
But in Arizona, the conservative America First Policy Institute has issued regulatory guidance on how election officials should deal with coercive behavior at polling places, citing First Amendment grounds. secured a court injunction to block it.
Republicans have targeted overseas voting in recent weeks, arguing that policies in Pennsylvania, Michigan and North Carolina allow ineligible people to vote.
Closely related to military voters, expatriates currently make up a larger share of overseas voters than active-duty military, making overseas voting a focus of Democratic voting efforts.
The justices ruled this month that it is unconstitutional for Michigan and North Carolina to count overseas votes cast by foreign nationals who have never lived in those states but have a parent (in Michigan, a spouse) who did. The RNC’s lawsuit alleging this was dismissed.
A lawsuit brought by members of the House of Representatives alleging that Pennsylvania does not do enough to verify overseas votes received a frosty reception in court this month, but no ruling has been made yet.
The series of lawsuits shows Republicans are looking at every aspect of election administration, but Democrats are also quickly coming to grips with rules introduced by Trump’s allies at the election board. is suing in court.
In North Carolina, Republicans secured a court order blocking a rule that would have allowed students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to use digital school IDs as photo IDs to vote.
Meanwhile, Democrats succeeded in blocking last-minute changes by the Georgia State Board of Elections to poll worker access, vote counting, drop box monitoring, and more.
Voter groups also successfully sued Nebraska over Republican officials’ refusal to enforce a state law restoring the franchise to people convicted of felonies.
