Hanging chads. Fake voters. “Reasonable inquiries” before certification of votes.
Closely contested presidential elections often introduce us to aspects of the electoral process – whether legal or not – that few of us can anticipate.
And sometimes the developments we think could derail the entire election. Thanks to Georgia’s Supreme Court, efforts to delay the certification of votes – or even the appointment of electors – through new rules from Georgia’s State Election Board have now failed.
Here is a copy of the GA Supreme Court order refusing to reinstate the rules pending the appeal, and denying a request for an expedited appeal before Election Day. In other words, Judge Cox’s decision declaring the State Election Commission’s rules null and void remains in effect. pic.twitter.com/OR9NxlOUVY
— Anna Bower (@AnnaBower) October 22, 2024
But the Republican Party’s litigation strategy is both aggressive and multi-dimensional. And in the past week, we’ve seen yet another way Republicans are trying to change the outcomes of crucial races long before votes are counted, let alone votes cast. And that is through a combination of:
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Implementing their own voter roll maintenance programs that the Justice Department says violate federal law.
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Seeking court orders requiring election officials to remove supposedly “ineligible” voters from state and/or county registration lists.
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Trying to prevent citizens living abroad, including the spouses and children of military personnel, from voting in the first place.
So far, however, these tactics have backfired.
Last week, for example, the Department of Justice in Alabama obtained a preliminary injunction banning Secretary of State Wes Allen from carrying out a “purge program” to purge so-called “non-citizen” voters from his state’s rolls less than 90 days before the election , which violates the National Voter Registration Act.
As a result of the DOJ lawsuit, Allen is not only prohibited from systematically purging voters, he must also help reinstate more than 3,000 Alabama voters who were inactivated by his program. The Justice Department has filed a similar lawsuit in Virginia, and a preliminary hearing is expected later this week.
But more importantly, with less than two weeks to go before Election Day, Republicans have suffered a string of court losses over their “purge” efforts in swing states. The timing of these cases suggests that the Republican Party never expected to win; Rather, these lawsuits function as press releases designed to sow doubt and create space for voter fraud narratives that have yet to be constructed. And that’s why it’s almost more Importantly, courts have now closed them.
Consider these developments from the past week:
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On Tuesday, a federal court in Michigan dismissed the Republican National Committee’s lawsuit against Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and the state’s top elections administrator for allegedly failing to make “reasonable efforts” to remove ineligible voters under the National Voter Registration Act. The court found not only that the RNC had established nothing more than a speculative injury, but also that the committee had failed to identify a single ineligible voter — and instead had merely asserted that the number of registered voters in Michigan was “impossibly high.” .
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On Monday, a state judge in North Carolina rejected an “emergency” bid by the RNC and the state GOP to exclude out-of-state voters born abroad to parents or guardians who last lived in North Carolina. The plaintiffs alleged that the state law at issue, a provision of the Uniform Military and Overseas Voters Act, “was misinterpreted by the State Board of Elections so that [to] allowing the registration of non-residents” to vote unconstitutional. But in denying the relief, the court noted that the statute at issue was enacted more than a decade ago with bipartisan support — and said the parties “have offered no substantial evidence of any instance in which the damages sought by plaintiffs to prevent ‘fraudulent’ ever taking place. .”
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And last week, a federal court in Nevada dismissed a lawsuit from the RNC and the Republican Party alleging that Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar and multiple county clerks failed to make reasonable efforts to maintain voter registration, as required by federal law. Specifically, the RNC and the state party claimed that inadequately culled voter rolls in Nevada have forced them to “divert resources from… voter registration and casting votes” and instead go after the ballots of eligible voters; monitor Nevada elections “for fraud and abuse”; and educating the public on, among other things, “issues of election integrity.” But the court found that these “vague allegations of resource shifting” were not enough to show that the parties had suffered actual, non-speculative harm, especially now that the supervisory appeals court has ruled that organizations “can no longer find their way can spend according to status” to maintain lawsuits.
To be fair, these decisions are not necessarily the final results. Republicans have already appealed North Carolina’s ruling — and the Nevada court has allowed the RNC and Nevada GOP to make this decision another shot to gain standing by filing a further amended complaint.
But so far, no court has approved these efforts by the Republican Party force purging voters. And that is good legal news now that the so-called procedural elections are approaching.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
