CHICAGO (AP) — As President Joe Biden and Donald Trump intensify their campaign in swing states, a quieter battle is taking place in the shadow of their revenge at the White House.
The Republican National Committee, newly reconstituted under Trump, has filed election-related lawsuits in nearly half the states. The recent voter roll maintenance lawsuits in Michigan and Nevada are part of a broader strategy targeting various aspects of voting and election administration.
This is not a new strategy. But with recent internal changes at the RNC and increased pressure from the former president, legal maneuvering is expected to play an increasingly important role for the party as Election Day approaches in November. Lawsuits are useful for campaign messages, fundraising, and to raise doubts about the validity of elections.
Danielle Alvarez, a senior adviser to the RNC and the Trump campaign, said legal action was one of the organization’s top priorities this year.
“This is something that is very important to President Trump,” she said. “He said this is something the RNC should do all year long.”
Democrats and legal experts warn of how the lawsuits could overwhelm election officials and undermine voter confidence in the election results.
The Democratic National Committee has its own legal strategy, building “a robust voter protection operation, investing tens of millions of dollars,” to counter Republican Party efforts to restrict access to the ballot box, said spokesperson Alex Floyd.
“The RNC is actively deploying an army of lawyers to make it harder for Americans to count their ballots,” he said.
Election litigation gained momentum after the 2020 election, as Trump and his allies unsuccessfully challenged his loss to Biden in dozens of lawsuits.
That year, experts wondered whether the blitz of lawsuits was an aberration caused by false claims of stolen elections and changes in voting processes due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Miriam said Seifter, an attorney with the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin. Faculty of Law.
They quickly realized that was not the case, as the 2022 midterm elections also generated a high number of election-related lawsuits. This year, things should be similar, she said.
“Litigation now appears to be an integral part of every party’s political and electoral strategies,” Seifter said.
Voter identification rules, mail-in ballots and voter roll maintenance are among the RNC’s litigation targets. The latest is a lawsuit filed this month alleging that Michigan failed to keep its voter rolls up to date.
Maintaining accurate voter rolls by updating voter status is routine for election officials, who monitor obituaries, changes in motor vehicle records or repeatedly returned election mail. Michigan also uses ERIC, an interstate data-sharing pact that helps states update voter rolls but has been targeted by conspiracy theories.
Opponents of the lawsuit said it was based on unsubstantiated and flawed data and risked purging legitimate voters.
“They claim there’s a problem because one piece of data doesn’t match another piece of data,” said Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School. “But the data elements they’re trying to match don’t measure the same thing. It’s like saying, “I just looked at the clock and it’s different from the temperature on my thermometer.” »
It’s not a new tactic, said Caren Short, director of legal affairs and research for the League of Women Voters, which filed to intervene in the Michigan lawsuit. She said most past lawsuits have come from “more fringe groups” rather than directly from the RNC.
“Now to see a major political party trying to remove people from the lists is very concerning,” she said.
Over the past four years, Michigan’s voter rolls have been the target of three similar, unsuccessful lawsuits. Just days after filing the lawsuit in Michigan, the RNC filed a similar one in Nevada.
A federal appeals court earlier sided with the RNC in a Pennsylvania lawsuit questioning whether officials should count incorrectly dated mail-in ballots. Wisconsin lawsuit targets mail-in voting procedures and ballot boxes. An RNC lawsuit in Arizona seeks to invalidate or adjust the state’s 200-page election manual, while another in Mississippi seeks to prevent mail-in ballots from being counted if they are stamped by the mailed on election day but are received a few days later.
Various other groups have recently filed similar lawsuits, including a lawsuit against the Maryland State Board of Elections, claiming the state’s election system does not comply with federal and state laws.
Marly Hornik, CEO of United Sovereign Americans, one of the groups behind the Maryland lawsuit, said more trials are planned in other states this year. On its website, United Sovereign Americans, which Hornik said was formed last summer, announced plans to file lawsuits in 23 states.
The GOP and affiliated groups are involved in dozens of other cases and more are ongoing, RNC officials said. During this election cycle, the RNC’s legal team has been involved in more than 80 lawsuits in 23 states, said Alvarez, the RNC spokesperson.
She said part of the reason for the wave of lawsuits was the lifting of a federal consent decree in 2018 that had significantly limited the RNC’s ability to challenge voter verification and other “ballot security.” .
In an interview this month with Fox News, RNC Chairman Michael Whatley outlined the party’s plans to prioritize election-related litigation. He said the RNC recruits and trains tens of thousands of poll observers and works with thousands of attorneys.
On Friday, the RNC announced plans to train observers, election officials and lawyers and send more than 100,000 lawyers and volunteers to monitor vote counting in battleground states in November.
The focus on election disputes is also reflected in recent changes within the RNC since Whatley and Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law, took control and reshaped the organization with a renewed emphasis on “election integrity.” The RNC now has “election integrity directors” in 13 states.
Christina Bobb, who promoted false claims that a 2020 election was stolen and was part of a fake voter scheme backed by Trump, was chosen to lead the department.
“One of our biggest changes between last cycle and this cycle was making the Department of Election Integrity its own department with its own budget and its own guidance,” Alvarez said.
Rick Hasen, an election law expert and professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said most lawsuits are unlikely to succeed in court but “serve as a basis for fundraising and attempt to keep this issue at the forefront of a campaign.” issue.”
Democratic groups and legal experts said the lawsuits could open the door to false narratives challenging the validity of the 2024 election, while consuming time and staff at election offices across the country. Post-election lawsuits could also delay or hinder the certification of results.
“I am concerned about these lawsuits that are not intended to clarify the rules but rather to lay the groundwork for false allegations that an election their side lost was stolen or rigged,” said David Becker, founder and executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, which advises local election officials nationwide. “We saw it in 2020. We saw it in 2022. And we’re starting to see sowing doubt in the minds of the electorate again in 2024.”
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Associated Press writer Joey Cappelletti in Lansing, Michigan, contributed to this report.
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