A flurry of election lawsuits will help determine not only who votes in the presidential election, but also who wins the race between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.
The Republican National Committee has filed more than 100 lawsuits, including one that requires absentee ballots to be counted only if they arrive by Election Day, and that mailed ballots are not dated. This also includes lawsuits aimed at ensuring that requirements such as compliance are met. And noncitizens, who are legally prohibited from voting in federal elections, cannot vote.
The Democratic National Committee and civil rights groups fear that these lawsuits, if successful, could lead to regulations that disenfranchise legitimate voters. The DNC and its allies are also pursuing lawsuits to block voting restrictions and block last-minute changes to election rules.
The RNC says the lawsuit is aimed at forcing election officials to comply with the law. RNC Chairman Michael Whatley said Pennsylvania’s mail-in voting policy “ignores the law” and “undermines public confidence in elections” and that the North Carolina Board of Elections “ignores the law” in how voters are registered. It is in violation of the law.”
“There’s a tremendous amount of litigation surrounding this year’s election,” said Sean Morales Doyle, director of voting rights at the Brennan Center for Justice.
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Here are some cases that can have a big impact.
Mississippi absentee voting deadline
Legal experts say Mississippi’s lawsuit over absentee voting deadlines could reach the Supreme Court and have far-reaching implications for numerous states.
Mississippi allows mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day to arrive up to five days later and continue to be counted. Twelve other states, including California, Florida and New York, and the District of Columbia have similar grace periods for absentee voting, ranging from one to 10 days.
The Republican National Committee and the Mississippi Republican Party challenged the law in federal court in January, arguing that federal law ends voting on Election Day.
But county election officials represented by the state insist that ballots only need to be cast by the deadline (if postmarked) and can be counted later.
The Justice Department sided with the states, arguing that setting an Election Day deadline could harm military and overseas voters who mail in their ballots.
If the case reaches the Supreme Court and the justices side with the RNC, the ruling could invalidate tens of thousands of ballots received after Election Day across the country. Without stricter deadlines, more than 50,000 mail-in ballots had been rejected at the end of 2020, according to a study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But legal experts said it was unlikely that the Fifth Circuit or the Supreme Court would issue such a “radical” decision.
“The potential consequences would be pretty dramatic. I certainly hope the Fifth Circuit doesn’t want to be that extreme,” Morales-Doyle said.
The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals already rejected a similar lawsuit from Illinois in August. In Mississippi, a federal district court upheld the state’s July deadline, and Republicans appealed. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments on September 24th.
“If the Fifth Circuit accepts the RNC’s arguments, this could have very far-reaching implications and possibly reach the Supreme Court,” said Daniel Tokaj, dean of the University of Wisconsin School of Law. Ta.
Certify your vote in Georgia
Several Georgia lawsuits have been filed to prevent county election results from returning on time amid bipartisan concerns that last-minute rule changes by the Georgia Board of Elections could cause delays and lead to election misinformation. may affect whether or not it is certified.
One of the rules passed on Sept. 20 requires three people to hand count the number of ballots in each of Georgia’s thousands of voting precincts and match the totals to machine-generated numbers. It is mandatory. The Democratic National Committee and Georgia Democratic Party allege in a lawsuit filed Sept. 30 that the state Legislature does not give the board the authority to pass such rules, which the Republican Georgia Attorney General It reflects the guidance given to the Board by Chris Carr.
โIf hand-count rules are allowed to go into effect, general elections will not be orderly and uniform; large counties will experience significant delays in reporting their vote counts,โ and โelection officials may “We’re going to have a hard time implementing new procedures.” According to the complaint.
Two Georgia county election boards near Atlanta, Cobb and DeKalb counties, also sued the state election board Tuesday over hand-counting rules and other last-minute changes.
Also on Tuesday, Georgia Judge Robert C. I. McBurney held an expedited hearing in another Democratic lawsuit targeting two August rules by the state election board. One rule requires county officials to conduct a “reasonable investigation” before certifying results, and another authorizes county officials to inspect documents produced during the conduct of the election. giving.
To “prevent chaos in November,” Democrats are asking McBurney to declare before the election that the Nov. 12 county certification deadline is mandatory and the new rules will not change that.
On Tuesday, McBurney also tried a case in which Republican Julie Adams, the Atlanta-Fulton County Board of Elections, refused to certify the results of the May primary election, a phenomenon that is growing in states. Adams is suing Fulton County to gain access to election documents and to have a court declare that a “no” vote is allowed when it comes to certification. The county says she does not have the right to see the documents or vote “no,” but it also says it is voluntarily allowing her access to the documents.
Mr. McBurney seemed intent on giving Mr. Adams a victory for most of the access to documents, but a loss for her when it came to authentication.
“You can prove it by going through everything to your heart’s content, rather than going through a lot of records or a few records and questioning poll workers in a limited, limited amount of time,” he said Tuesday.
Voting error in Pennsylvania
In Pennsylvania, another key battleground state, several important lawsuits are pending over how to deal with errors in absentee ballots.
The state Supreme Court ruled on Sept. 13 that absentee ballots with missing or incorrect dates on the outer envelope should not be counted. On September 27, the American Civil Liberties Union urged the federal government to reconsider the issue, arguing that rejecting ballots for “material errors” violates the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. requested the Supreme Court.
The state’s high court on Friday dismissed another similar lawsuit, ruling that “substantial changes to existing laws and procedures cannot be imposed or tolerated” because voting has already begun.
Justice Kevin Brobson said the court had already ruled in February 2023 that if an envelope is not dated or is dated incorrectly, “the ballot is invalidated as a matter of Pennsylvania law.” and consented to the unsigned decision in writing. Justice Sally Updike Mundy joined his opinion.
Justice Christine Donahue agreed in a written statement that overturning the statute is a “serious task” and that the court should review the entire statute, not just the part that deals with errors in absentee ballots. Justice Daniel McCaffrey joined her opinion.
Chief Justice Debra Todd dissented from the decision, writing that the issue was a “serious matter and it is ‘essential'” that the dispute be resolved now.
In the second lawsuit, the RNC and Pennsylvania Republican Party asked the state Supreme Court on September 18th to throw out absentee ballots that Secretary of State Al Schmidt granted to county election boards in March and August. Requested instructions on how to correct the mistake without asking for instructions. . Defects could be defects such as voters forgetting to sign or date their ballots or missing outer security envelopes.
Under Schmidt’s guidance, some counties are sending automated emails to voters with incomplete mail-in ballots, allowing them to cast a provisional ballot on Election Day. Republicans argue that the ballots should be rejected outright because the state Legislature has not given Schmidt or counties the power to help voters amend their mail-in ballots. Otherwise, Republicans argue, uncertainty over mail-in voting amendments could “spark confusion and undermine public confidence in elections.”
Government lawyers countered that Republicans confused legal issues and misrepresented the facts. Election officials in counties including those surrounding Democratic strongholds Philadelphia and Pittsburgh said they were working to ensure voters could vote even if their mailed ballots were defective. The Democratic National Committee and state parties say the Republican argument amounts to disenfranchising voters whose mail-in ballots were rejected.
The state Supreme Court dismissed the case Friday in an unsigned opinion that said Republicans waited too long to file their case. Republicans filed a similar lawsuit in September 2022, which was dismissed for lack of jurisdiction in a district court, but it did not return to court until September of this year.
Brobson wrote an opinion concurring with the ruling, saying that Republicans raised “important issues” in the lawsuit but that the general election had already begun, and that the lawsuit “could have pursued these issues in a more timely manner.” ” he added. He said the issue should be resolved before a future election and that new lawsuits could be filed after the election. Mandy again joined Brobson’s opinion.
North Carolina Voter Registration Identification Dispute
In North Carolina, there is a battle over the identification required to register to vote. The final court ruling could determine whether 225,000 voters will be removed from the rolls, about the margin of Trump’s victory over Biden in the state in 2020. Equivalent to 3 times.
The RNC and the state Republican Party sued the state election board in August for failing to request identification, such as driver’s license numbers or the last four digits of Social Security numbers. As a result, Republicans argued, noncitizens may have been allowed to register, increasing distrust in elections.
Elections Commission members responded that it is not clear that the federal Help America Vote Act requires registrants to provide ID numbers. Elections commission members accused Republicans of trying to exclude hundreds of thousands of voters from voting and asked a judge to dismiss the lawsuit.
Voting began on September 20th, with ballots distributed to military and overseas voters.
Chief U.S. District Judge Richard Myers scheduled a hearing for Oct. 17.
“It’s just incredible that a case like that would be heard before the Supreme Court in late October,” said Aziz Haq, a law professor at the University of Chicago.