Republicans and Democrats Battle in Court as US Election Day Remains

Democrats argue that Republicans are laying the groundwork for Trump to contest the results if he loses and still declares victory; just like he did four years ago.

Marc Elias, a leading election lawyer for the Democratic Party, told

Republicans say they are suing in the name of “election integrity” after Trump claimed the only way Harris could win on Tuesday was for Democrats to “cheat.”

“I know better than most the widespread Fraud and Fraud committed by Democrats in the 2020 Presidential Election,” he said in a post on Truth Social.

Trump, 78, has never acknowledged his election loss to Joe Biden, and his defeat this time could pave the way for the former president to be prosecuted at the federal and state level on charges of conspiring to overturn the 2020 results.

The Republican National Committee (RNC), co-chaired by Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara, has filed more than 130 lawsuits, mostly focusing on seven swing states that could decide the election: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

The lawsuits filed by the RNC and allied groups have targeted vote-counting procedures, voting machines, voter registration, absentee ballots, certification of results and a host of other issues.

Republicans have focused specifically on preventing non-U.S. citizens from voting, wildly exaggerating what watchdog groups say is a very rare occurrence.

They took aim at mail ballot rules in many states, which Democrats have historically used at much higher rates than Republicans.

Democrats have filed dozens of lawsuits to protect mail-in voting, absentee ballots and increase the number of drop boxes. They assembled an army of lawyers to litigate pre- and post-election disputes.

David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, said many of the Republicans’ pre-election lawsuits, many of which have been rejected, were designed not to legitimately clarify voting rules but to “set the stage for claims that the election was held.” was stolen.”

“Depending on the outcome, we will see a resurgence of these allegations,” Becker said during a panel hosted by the advocacy group Free Press. he said.

Republicans’ legal efforts are better organized this time than they were four years ago, when they were haphazardly led by Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani.

Giuliani, the former New York mayor, was indicted for his efforts to overturn election results in Georgia and Arizona and was sentenced to cough up nearly $150 million for slandering two poll workers.

“In 2020, Trump had a motley collection of lawyers, many of whom were as tall on wild conspiracy theories as they were short on legal acumen,” said Binghamton University history professor Donald Nieman.

Some of the most notable pre-election lawsuits have emerged in Georgia, where Biden defeated Trump by fewer than 12,000 votes in 2020 and where Trump-allied electoral college members are trying to enforce new rules.

Georgia courts blocked changes, one requiring manual counting of votes and another that would have given board members the power to refuse to certify results.

Derek Muller, who teaches election law at the University of Notre Dame, said the number of votes potentially affected by each pre-election lawsuit is “very small,” meaning 1,000 or 2,000 voters or ballots.

At the same time, Muller said, “If the election is extremely close — and it was decided by 537 votes in Florida in 2000 — then everything matters,” referring to Republican George W. Bush’s margin over Democrat Al Gore.

The conservative-dominated Supreme Court controversially resolved the 2000 election recount dispute in Bush’s favor and may be asked to play a role again this time around.

The high court has mostly stayed on the sidelines of the current campaign, but on Wednesday it stepped in and allowed the Republican-led state of Virginia to purge nearly 1,600 people from voter rolls for allegedly not being U.S. citizens.

It was a 6-3 vote, with three liberal justices dissenting.