Election 2024 Legal Challenges: Republican-Led Effort To Disqualify Voters Shut Down In Michigan

22 Oct 2024 by Alison Durkee · Forbes

Topline

A federal judge in Michigan on Tuesday threw out a Republican-led lawsuit challenging the battleground state’s voter rolls and alleging more voters should have been removed, as courts across the country are issuing a flurry of last-minute rulings on ballots and how elections are run in the month before Election Day as parties seek to expand or limit voter access.

Voters wait in line to cast their ballot at the Madison Public Library Central in Madison, ... [+] Wisconsin, on October 22.AFP via Getty Images

Timeline

Oct. 22A federal judge dismissed a Republican National Committee-led lawsuit in Michigan that took issue with voter rolls in the state, alleging the number of voters was “impossibly high” and the state wasn’t removing voters from their rolls as required by law, with the judge ruling the plaintiffs didn’t provide enough evidence there was any wrongdoing.

Oct. 21Judges in Michigan and North Carolina rejected lawsuits brought by the RNC challenging overseas voters casting a ballot in those states even if they’ve never actually lived there—for instance, if their parents or spouse lived there—with the Michigan judge calling it an “11th hour attempt to disenfranchise” those voters.

Oct. 18A federal judge in Nevada dismissed an RNC lawsuit challenging the state’s voter rolls—claiming, like in Michigan, that the number of voters was “impossibly high”—throwing out the lawsuit for a second time and ruling the plaintiffs hadn’t provided any “concrete specifics” of wrongdoing.

Oct. 17A Trump-appointed judge in North Carolina struck down a Republican lawsuit aiming to remove 225,000 voters from the state’s voter rolls, alleging fraud, with the judge ruling that removing those voters would move the state “away from a democratic form of government.”

Oct. 16The Nebraska Supreme Court ruled convicted felons can vote in the state after they’ve completed their sentence, striking down an effort by the state to prevent them from voting as Nebraska could become pivotal to determining which presidential candidate wins the Electoral College.

Oct. 16A federal judge blocked a program in Alabama that purged voters from the voter rolls—claiming doing so would help prevent noncitizens from voting—after the Justice Department sued to stop the program because it was too close to the election.

Oct. 16New election rules in Georgia that would have required officials to hand count ballots and potentially delayed the vote certification were blocked in court, after Democrats argued the state election board’s new rules could cause “chaos” in November.

Oct. 15The Ohio Supreme Court upheld restrictions on ballot drop boxes, after the state enacted new limitations saying people dropping off ballots for voters with disabilities have to go into an election office rather than leaving the ballot in a drop box.

Oct. 15A Georgia state judge issued a judgment saying state election workers must certify their county’s election results—regardless of whether they think any ballots were fraudulent—after an official who had refused to certify results in the past asked for clarification and more than a dozen local officials have voted against certifying in recent years.

Oct. 12A federal judge rejected an effort by conservatives to require Arizona to confirm voters’ citizenship ahead of the election.

Oct. 7The Pennsylvania Supreme Court declined to take up two voting cases after Democrats challenged counties throwing out ballots with incorrect or missing dates, and Republicans opposed some county officials letting voters correct issues with their mail-in ballots, which should not be allowed under state law.

What To Watch For

There are many outstanding cases that still have to be decided by Election Day, with Marc Elias, a voting rights attorney aligned with the Democratic Party, reporting Sunday that 191 cases are pending in 39 states. The Justice Department has sued Virginia for challenging voters’ eligibility too close to the election, for instance, and Georgia Republicans are appealing the ruling against the state election board’s new rules. The RNC has filed lawsuits taking aim at voting practices, including alleging Fulton County, Georgia, did not hire enough Republican poll workers. More lawsuits are also likely to be filed and rapidly decided in the two weeks before Election Day.

What We Don’t Know

What will happen after Election Day. Close election results in any battleground state could prompt a slew of lawsuits over how ballots are counted and the election results, as happened in 2020 when the Trump campaign launched a wide-ranging legal campaign challenging the vote count. Battleground states are already preparing for an anticipated onslaught of post-election lawsuits, Reuters reports, with Arizona’s court system ordering judges to prioritize election lawsuits so that certification doesn’t get delayed. Republican and Democratic campaigns are also gearing up for a busy legal landscape: An RNC official told ABC News the party has 5,000 volunteer attorneys ready to be deployed on Election Day, and ABC cited an internal memo from Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign that claims it is “the most prepared campaign in history for what we face” in terms of litigation.

Chief Critic

Democrats have heavily criticized Republicans for the rash of lawsuits they’ve brought ahead of Election Day and are likely to continue filing, arguing the GOP is trying to sow doubt in the election results even before they’ve come in. “We're seeing a record number of lawsuits filed before the election—nearly every day—in a seemingly coordinated push to use the legitimacy of the courts to lay the groundwork for discrediting an unfavorable result," Wendy Weiser, director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Democracy Program, told ABC News. "The lawsuits are not about getting legal relief, but about spreading conspiracy theories." Many of the GOP lawsuits that have been brought are based on concerns about election irregularities or fraud, such as noncitizen voting or mail-in ballots, even though evidence has shown election fraud is exceedingly rare and there is no evidence of any widespread fraud in the 2020 election.

Key Background

Republicans have ramped up legal challenges and tightened voting rules since the 2020 election. Trump and his allies filed at least 60 lawsuits challenging the vote count in 2020 as the then-president made baseless allegations of fraud, and Republicans have used Trump’s fraud allegations as an underpinning for their litigation challenging voting rules. GOP-led states have also pointed to Trump’s baseless claims to justify enacting their own tighter restrictions on voting ahead of the 2024 election, which Democrats have then challenged in court. The RNC announced in April it intended to make its litigation efforts a key part of its strategy in the general election, launching an extensive “election integrity” effort with 100,000 staffers and volunteers. Chief Counsel Charlie Spies said in a statement the “RNC legal team will be working tirelessly to ensure that elections officials follow the rules” and “will aggressively take them to court if they don’t.”