Mailing it in: Republicans and Democrats lay groundwork for election results fights

Four months out from Election Day, activists are still fighting over the rules that will dictate how voters cast their ballots, including in swing states. The parties are preparing for legal battles if the results are close, as they were four years ago. In this series, the Washington Examiner will look at the battles over election rules. Part 1 looked at absentee voting. Part 2 looked at voter registration. Part 3 looks at lawsuits and how both sides are preparing for the fight.

The presidential election may be four months away, but the lawsuits related to it are already in full swing.

Republicans and Democrats have been feverishly working behind the scenes, raising cash and filing motions. Already, county-level officials in five battleground states have tried to block the certification of vote tallies in local races and in the primaries, which some experts warn is a test run for November.

FIGHTS BREWING OVER VOTER REGISTRATION IN KEY SWING STATES

“Litigation seems to now be a fixture of each party’s political and electoral strategies,” said Miriam Seifter, an attorney with the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School.

SWING-STATE BALLOT LAWSUITS COULD SHAPE 2024 PRESIDENTIAL RACE

Georgia

Julie Adams, a member of Georgia’s Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections, refused to certify two primaries this year, claiming she had been denied her legal right to review a long list of election records for fraud.

Adams, who has gone on the record to say she believes former President Donald Trump was the victim of a stolen election in 2020, has filed suit against the board. If a judge grants her and others in her position the power to hold up the outcome of elections, it could create a chaotic aftermath to an already tense 2024 election.

In Adams’s case, the Democratic National Committee and the Georgia Democratic Party have asked to intervene in the lawsuit, claiming that her actions are part of a coordinated effort by the Republican Party and Trump to start to sow the same doubt in 2024 as they did in 2020. She has also received pushback from Stephanie Jackson Ali, policy director at the New Georgia Project Action Fund, a left-leaning group focused on voting rights.

“Julie Adams’ role on the Fulton County election board makes as much sense as inviting a fox to a seat in the henhouse,” Ali told the Guardian. “Ms. Adams has made clear – in her private work for the Election Integrity Network, in her recent lawsuit against the country board, and in refusing to certify the May elections – that she is not working to make elections stronger or build voter confidence. Instead, Ms. Adams is beating the dead horse of fictitious stolen elections. … We are concerned that Ms. Adams and her cohorts will continue to push this narrative in November.”

In Fulton County, the heart of the Democratic vote in Georgia, anything there that would hold up its total in November could help make it look like Trump had a large lead in the state. But the number is based mostly on red counties. However, once Fulton is factored in, the numbers are likely to swing drastically in the other direction.

If that happens, it would open up a new narrative and give birth to voter fraud conspiracies.

Swing states

Since Adams’s case, county-level election officials in Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona, and Michigan have tried to block the certification of the vote count in the primaries and general elections. All five are key battleground states that could determine the next president and which party controls the Senate and House of Representatives.

In 2022, two commissioners from Cochise County, Arizona, refused to certify midterm election results. The same thing happened in three Pennsylvania counties. In May, Michigan’s Delta County Board of Canvassers refused to certify local results. Officials in all of the instances blamed a lack of confidence in election machines or concerns over ballot errors but failed to produce any evidence of widespread voter fraud.

Some have worried that the refusal to certify results is just the start of a deluge of legal battles that will begin before the first ballots are even cast for the 2024 presidential election.

Mobilizing and the courts

The GOP has pivoted to a more aggressive stance on election-related lawsuits, vowing to make Trump and “election integrity” its top two priorities this year.

With so much on the line, both parties have been mobilizing at unprecedented levels to monitor the election this year.

The Republican National Committee has assembled a network of lawyers and volunteers to clog up the court system. The RNC has already filed election-related lawsuits in nearly half of the battleground states, part of a larger strategy to target and pick apart various aspects of voting and election administration, the Associated Press reported.

Danielle Alvarez, a senior adviser to the RNC and the Trump campaign, said the lawsuits were one of the organization’s main priorities this year.

“This is something that’s very important to President Trump,” she said.

The RNC has already installed 13 “election integrity” state directors and wants to recruit 100,000 volunteers. It has been hosting training sessions with state and GOP parties in swing states such as Wisconsin, Arizona, and Pennsylvania. The party also plans to send monitors to observe every step of the election process and then create hotlines for people to call in and report problems.

It is all part of the RNC’s effort to focus on stopping “Democrat attempts to circumvent the rules.”

RNC co-Chairwoman Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law, hyped up the crowd at a kickoff event in Bloomfield Hills in Oakland County, Michigan, a county crucial to winning the state.

“We can never go back and repeat 2020, but we can learn the lessons from 2020,” Lara Trump said.

The RNC’s litigation targets include voter ID rules, mail ballots, voter roll maintenance, and post-Election Day recounts and audits.

Watching Wisconsin

In Wisconsin, a crucial swing state where Trump lost by less than 1 point in 2020, the RNC is deploying attorneys specifically for Milwaukee and roaming attorneys for Racine and Kenosha, according to Mike Hoffman, the party’s Wisconsin Election Integrity State Director.

“We’re going to have attorneys fly in from Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota,” Hoffman said during a meeting, according to the New York Times. “Wisconsin’s too important to lose.”

Republicans have already filed complaints against election officials in the dark blue cities of Milwaukee and Madison and the Wisconsin Elections Commission. Among the complaints is that they were denied poll worker positions during the primary election in April.

“Democrat tricks from 2020 won’t work this time,” Charlie Spies, the chief counsel of the RNC, said in a statement announcing the program. “In 2024, we’re going to beat the Democrats at their own game and the RNC legal team will be working tirelessly to ensure that elections officials follow the rules in administering elections.”

Democratic counterpunch

Like Republicans, Democrats are also stepping up their game.

Biden’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee have opened hundreds of campaign offices nationwide, ready to counterpunch.

“[The DNC], alongside our partners at the state and local level, won’t let MAGA Republicans get away with these baseless attacks on our democracy, and we will continue to use every tool at our disposal to ensure that all Americans can make their voice heard at the ballot box,” DNC spokesman Alex Floyd said.

He told Axios that the DNC has built “a robust voter-protection operation, investing tens of millions of dollars to protect against MAGA Republicans’ assault on our voting rights.”

Democrats have already challenged some of the GOP lawsuits and are gearing up for more.

The DNC and Arizona Democratic Party filed motions in February to intervene in two GOP lawsuits that targeted the state’s Election Procedural Manual. The guide lays out a blueprint for state election officials in conducting and certifying elections.

In one lawsuit, which aims to invalidate the entire document, the GOP claims Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, is required to update the manual every two years.

The first suit argues that Fontes did not provide enough time for public comment on the changes he proposed, specifically with a rule that Republicans argue limits the public’s access to records containing a voter’s signature. They also took issue with a provision that allows federal-only voters who have not proven their citizenship to vote in presidential elections.

The second GOP-led lawsuit targets the manual’s instructions for operating ballot drop-off locations and preventing voter intimidation.

“Democrats are fighting back with every tool at our disposal to ensure that every eligible voter across Arizona has an opportunity to make their voice heard at the ballot box, and participate in free and fair elections,” DNC Chairman Jaime Harrison said in a statement.

The DNC also challenged a North Carolina election law almost immediately after it went into effect in 2023.

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The DNC took issue with provisions on same-day registration, which required additional photo ID and address verification requirements. Under those provisions, if voters opt to do same-day registration but do not have their submitted information verified on time, the ballot could be withdrawn under the new laws, Politico reported.

“Defending Americans’ fundamental right to cast their ballots against efforts to undermine their freedom to vote is an urgent priority for President Biden and Vice President Harris,” Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said in a statement. “SB 747 is not about protecting election security. It’s about making it harder for North Carolinians to vote and adding new burdens for voters to cast their ballot safely and, ultimately, have their vote counted.”