WASHINGTON — Republicans are launching a series of legal battles in key states ahead of the November election, raising suspicions among Kamala Harris and her Democratic allies that the underlying goal is to sow doubts about the outcome if Donald Trump loses.
In Georgia, the Republican-controlled state elections board is trying to give local officials the power to decide for themselves whether something abnormal happened during voting, potentially slowing down the process of identifying the winner.
In Michigan, Republicans are suing over whether the city of Detroit hired enough Republican poll workers, and in North Carolina, they are arguing that the state’s voter rolls could potentially allow noncitizens to vote.
All of these claims seem different on the surface. But Harris’ campaign says there’s a common pattern among them: Trump and his Republican allies want to sow confusion about the outcome of the election if he loses. Democrats have filed legal papers in at least one case that express doubts about what they see as the real purpose of the GOP lawsuit.
A defeated Trump could use the cases to revive his baseless claim that election procedures were flawed in ways that should overturn the result, Harris campaign officials say. Trump and his allies filed dozens of unsuccessful lawsuits after the 2020 election, amid a whirlwind of false claims of voter fraud that culminated in an angry mob attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 to try to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s victory.
“We believe that every complaint that the candidates file is a building block of the argument that they will use in November to claim that the election is rigged,” said a Harris campaign official, speaking on condition of anonymity. “That is fundamentally our view of what they are litigating. That is why we are prepared, we are winning in court, and we will make sure that this election is free and fair.”
The Trump campaign referred questions to the Republican National Committee.
RNC spokeswoman Claire Zunk said in a prepared statement: “President Trump’s efforts to ensure election integrity are designed to protect every legal vote, mitigate threats to the electoral process, and secure the election. As Democrats continue their election interference against President Trump and the American people, our operation is taking on their schemes and preparing for November.”
With rare exceptions in American politics, the two months between election day and inauguration day are typically quiet. That was not the case in 2020, when Trump worked to overturn the result and stay in power.
He still faces federal criminal charges stemming from that quixotic scheme. He was indicted by special counsel Jack Smith for attempting to defraud the American public and disenfranchise voters in multiple states, but the trial has been delayed and is unlikely to take place before the election. Trump has denied any wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty.
Both sides are bracing for a contentious post-election period. Chris LaCivita, Trump’s co-campaign manager, suggested at a Politico event this summer that Democrats could try to overturn the results if Trump wins: “It’s not over until he puts his hand on the Bible and takes the oath of office. It’s not over until it’s there. It’s not over on Election Day. It’s over on Inauguration Day, because I wouldn’t put anything above anybody.”
Democrats began their preparations years ago, with lawyers drafting briefs in anticipation that Republican lawmakers might, for example, refuse to certify the election results, a second Harris campaign official said.
“This is the best prepared Democratic campaign at this point because we knew this was coming,” the official said. “It’s critical to have those people in the states who know the law and the players and who lived through 2020, saw what happened there and learned from it.”
Among other legal challenges, Republicans have objected to Arizona’s election procedures manual and Nevada’s law allowing mail-in ballots to be counted after Election Day, provided they are postmarked.
Ground zero could be Georgia, a state Biden narrowly won in 2020 that Harris is trying to hold on to. Trump faces criminal charges in Georgia over his efforts to overturn his defeat in the state four years ago. He has pleaded not guilty.
This year, the question is whether Georgia’s county election boards are free to use their own discretion to certify election results. Last month, the Republican-controlled Georgia Election Board voted 3-2 to expand the powers of local officials, allowing them to certify results after conducting a “reasonable inquiry” into their accuracy. There was no definition of what constitutes a “reasonable inquiry.”
Trump praised the three Republicans who voted for the rules, calling them “pit bulls” for their honesty.
But Democrats warn that the new rules could disrupt Georgia’s strict election certification schedule. Moreover, local election boards have never had that kind of authority and are supposed to be limited to the simple task of tallying vote totals, Democrats say. If someone alleges fraud in an election, the proper venue to test that claim is in court, they add.
“If someone thinks there’s a reason to throw out ballots, that’s a decision that’s made by the courts,” Sara Tindall Ghazal, the lone Democrat on the Georgia state election board, said in an interview. “It’s not a decision made by a partisan group of civilians on the election board, many of whom have no experience in this area other than their partisan connections.”
Justin Levitt, a professor of election law at Loyola Law School and a former Biden White House official who specializes in democracy and voting rights, said the role of a county board of elections amounts to simple addition.
“It’s a process of saying 1 plus 1 equals 2. It’s not saying, ‘1 plus 1 equals I don’t know if there’s bamboo fiber in the ballots.’ That’s not what they (local polling stations) are for,” he said, referring to a conspiracy theory that circulated in 2020 about fraudulent ballots from Asia.
The Democratic National Committee filed a lawsuit against the board last week to block the new procedures from taking effect.
In its filing, the committee argued that the new rule would “introduce substantial uncertainty into the post-election process” and “invite chaos by establishing new processes that contradict existing statutory obligations.”
Both the Harris and Trump campaigns are deploying significant legal muscle for the election and its aftermath. An RNC memo released in February said the committee was involved in 78 lawsuits in 23 states.
“If Democrats decide to continue their attacks on election safeguards through Election Day, we will be prepared to take legal action and ensure that the election is fair, transparent, legal and accurate,” Zunk said.
Harris’ campaign says it has hired hundreds of lawyers across the country to protect its legal interests. Dana Remus, Biden’s former White House counsel, is leading the team charged with protecting the election’s legal interests.
The campaign also has outside help. Jim Messina, who led Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign, has launched a political action committee that can raise unlimited amounts of money and will also help the lawyers. Norm Eisen, special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee for Trump’s first impeachment trial, is the group’s outside counsel.
Election experts warn that challenging election results can undermine public confidence in the system. Voters then feel that democracy is broken and may react by refusing to vote or expressing anger.
Trump has fueled doubts about the reliability of the American elections, both in his victory and in his defeat.
When he won in 2016, he baselessly claimed that he lost the popular vote only because millions of people voted illegally for his opponent, Hillary Clinton. And when he lost in 2020, he claimed the election was “rigged” in Biden’s favor.
Although he lost California by more than five million votes that year, Trump recently declared that he would win the state if Jesus Christ, or failing that, an honest mortal, counted the votes.
“Trump said that if it wasn’t for the rigging, he would have won California. That’s like me saying that if it wasn’t for the rigging, I would have become a supermodel,” Messina said.
Since Trump made false claims of voter fraud, the partisan divide over election integrity has widened. A poll last year showed that only 22% of Republicans were confident that votes in the 2024 presidential election would be counted accurately, compared with 71% of Democrats.
“We already have members of the population who are 100 percent convinced that it is impossible to hold free and fair elections in Georgia,” Ghazal said.
Many of the Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 did so under the mistaken belief that he had been robbed of his 2020 victory. The first rioter to breach the building, Michael Sparks, told the judge at a hearing last week that he believed “to this day” the election was stolen from Trump. Sparks was sentenced to more than four years in prison.
Some election experts fear that Trump voters are likely to resort to violence again if he loses in November.
“I worry about the chaos that could happen,” Levitt said. “For people who are being told the election was stolen, it’s natural to take to the streets when you don’t feel like you have the power to peacefully influence the outcome.”
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