In the past year, the RNC has filed 135 lawsuits in 26 states, according to Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley, in addition to dozens of other Republican-backed challenges in battleground states. Some of those challenges in the months ahead of Election Day failed, leaving in place permissive absentee voting and ballot counting laws in key swing states.

But two — purging noncitizens from Virginia voter rolls and extending an early voting deadline in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, after a judge reviewed evidence that some voters had been improperly turned away from polling places — have yielded victories for the GOP this week as lawyers from both parties prepare for the prospect of contesting razor-thin results on Election Day.

Whatley told reporters during a press call on Wednesday that the GOP powerhouse working to get former President Donald Trump reelected has focused on “four primary drivers for litigation.”

“One, only American citizens can vote. It is the law of the land, and we need the states to enforce that. Two, we want voter ID in place everywhere we can. Three, states must clean up their voter rolls. And four, in states that have mail in balloting or absentee balloting, we want basic protections in place on the mail in ballots,” Whatley said.

“This is not election denialism. This is not a conspiracy theory. These are basic protections that are widely supported,” the GOP chairman added.

The decisions the RNC is celebrating

Whatley’s remarks came on the heels of two legal victories for Republican-backed election integrity efforts.

The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed Virginia to continue its efforts to remove suspected ineligible or noncitizens from its voter rolls, and a judge in the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania granted the Trump campaign’s lawsuit demanding to extend early voting after several voters said they were turned away at Bucks County election offices.

Early voting has now been extended until Friday at 5 p.m. for Bucks County, which swung about four points in favor of President Joe Biden in 2020.

After filing a series of unsuccessful legal challenges in the wake of Trump’s 2020 loss, Republicans had vowed to take a more proactive approach to election-related litigation this cycle.

“I think it’s really important that we get the word spread loud and clear that we are taking this seriously, that you can trust American elections, and that in 2024 we want to reestablish any trust that may have been lost previously,” Lara Trump said.

In addition to this week’s legal wins, Republicans also saw a court victory on Oct. 25 that could change the landscape for voting methods in future elections, but not next week’s.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, consisting of mostly Trump-appointed and other Republican-appointed judges, said it was illegal for states to count mail-in ballots received after Election Day, siding with Republicans in a case that challenged Mississippi’s five-day grace period.

Only Mississippi, a state that trends conservative, is affected by the decision, but the law called into question mail-in voting practices used in about 20 states across the country, and the ruling could potentially see an appeal to the Supreme Court.

The legal setbacks dealt to Republicans before Tuesday

Several RNC-backed challenges have faltered under judicial scrutiny, leaving in place permissive absentee voting and ballot counting laws in places like North Carolina and Michigan, states which matter greatly for the race between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.

The RNC sued North Carolina, targeting a law permitting U.S. citizens overseas who never lived in the state to cast their ballots there, as long as they haven’t registered elsewhere and their parent or legal guardian was previously an eligible state voter. But without checking Social Security numbers or other citizenship documents, the RNC raised concerns about the risk of ineligible voters participating this year. They also argue the overseas voting law violates the state’s constitution, which limits voting in the state’s elections “to North Carolina residents and only North Carolina residents.”

A three-judge panel on the North Carolina Court of Appeals rejected the case after a trial judge refused the party’s request for an intervention.

In Michigan, a 2022 amendment to the state constitution paved the way for mail-in ballots that arrive an entire week after the election to be counted. Republicans challenged the change and said the amendment created an overly broad definition of eligible overseas voters. But without even weighing the merits of the case, a state judge dismissed the suit last week in what she described as an “11th-hour attempt” to disenfranchise voters.

Whatley previously said that “North Carolinians and Michiganders should not have their votes canceled by those who’ve never lived in the state in the first place.”

Republicans were dealt another legal blow last month in Georgia.

The Georgia State Board of Elections, which holds a 3-2 Republican majority, faced challenges to their efforts to tighten election oversight and processes earlier this month.

A significant ruling came from Superior Court Judge Thomas Cox, who invalidated several last-minute rule changes proposed by Trump’s allies on the state election board, including a push for hand-counting ballots in addition to regular machine ballot counts on election night. Cox deemed these changes “illegal, unconstitutional, and void,” citing their proximity to the election as problematic.

The other six rules Cox struck down included setting requirements for a “reasonable inquiry” by local officials before certifying results, giving county election board members access to election-related documents generated as the election was being conducted, making absentee ballot deliverers provide a signature and photo ID upon delivery, requiring surveillance and recording of authorized drop boxes after the close of polls, expanding poll-watching areas, and adding new constraints for the county board of registrars in reporting absentee ballot information.

But Georgia’s highest court refused a Republican request to expedite an appeal against Cox’s decision, and the case won’t be resolved before Tuesday.

Whatley panned Cox’s decision as one that is exemplary of the “very worst of judicial activism.”

Although the rule changes aimed at securing Georgia’s election faltered, election integrity advocates such as former Sen. Kelly Loeffler, a Republican who lost her seat representing Georgia in 2020, said she has been leading “thousands of poll watchers” in the Peach State and has promoted an “election integrity hotline” backed by the state GOP that residents can call in the event that they see any suspicious behavior at polling sites.

But perhaps the most consistent threat to GOP-backed litigation is Democratic election lawyer Elias, who has been litigating at least 55 voting and election cases across 21 states. He also recently joined Harris’s legal team, a sign that Democrats feel they need to up their legal defenses.

On Wednesday, Ex-Trump adviser Steve Bannon shredded Elias’s tactics on the first day back hosting his War Room podcast since his four-month prison sentence, alleging the ex-Hillary Clinton campaign attorney could try to block a Trump victory through a litigation tactic he called a “Nullification Project.”

Steve Bannon wasn’t out of jail for 12 hours today before he talked about me 3+ times. Apparently, I’ve been living rent-free in his head even while behind bars.

As his guests admit, my team of lawyers is better than the GOP’s. And we’re ready to beat them again in 2024. pic.twitter.com/mWOAIjENfq

— Marc E. Elias (@marceelias) October 29, 2024

One of Bannon’s guests, Article III Project founder Mike Davis, admitted that Elias’s courtroom track record is marked with success, saying that Trump needs to win “decisively by 3 or 4 points” and calling Elias a “savage attorney, the best attorney out there on election integrity.”

Elias fired back to Bannon on X, saying even “his guests admit, my team of lawyers is better than the GOP’s.”

GOP lean on Elon Musk’s poll-watching community on X as another Supreme Court ruling awaits

Republicans eagerly anticipate another Supreme Court intervention, while also expressing hope that Elon Musk’s social media site X will serve as a spotlight on potential acts of election fraud or malfeasance ahead of Nov. 5.

In the remaining Supreme Court dispute, the RNC asks the justices to block election officials from allowing voters to cast provisional ballots if they already submitted a mail-in ballot that contained mistakes, such as failing to insert mandatory inner sleeves called “secrecy envelopes,” or submitting ballots with missing or mismatched signatures.

Attorneys for the Republicans argued a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling “usurps” the state legislature’s authority. The ruling “effectively creates a cure process for mail-ballot errors — a process everyone agrees the General Assembly has deliberately chosen not to create,” the GOP attorneys wrote in court filings.

The high court is expected to respond to the request as soon as Friday.

Meanwhile, Musk’s recently formed community group on X, dubbed the “Election Integrity Community,” has been lauded by Trump surrogates as being “100% effective,” pointing to posts made in the group that led to the Trump campaign’s successful lawsuit in Bucks County.

“I think it definitely galvanizes the community,” said David Gelman, a Trump campaign legal surrogate and former prosecutor.

If you are aware of any election integrity issues, please report them to the 𝕏 Election Integrity Community https://t.co/debSdx4qmo

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 30, 2024

The X CEO’s community group is intended for flagging “potential instances of voter fraud and irregularities that Americans are experiencing in the 2024 Election,” according to a pinned post from Musk’s America PAC. So far, more than 55,000 X users have joined the group.

Gelman, who worked on the legal team for the RNC in 2020, said the efforts to promote election integrity in the current election are “night and day” compared to the last presidential election.

“We’re not reacting, we’re proactive,” Gelman said. “We’re not waiting until Election Day. We’re not waiting till the day before that day, or even after Election Day.”