A Sense of Doubt blog post #3495 - Election Legal Battles
BTW, I am not going to post about Dad non-stop, but I am likely to return to memories of my Dad tomorrow.
And so, it begins.
And "Republicans" are doing everything that they can rig to the results, set up their weak justification to ignore the results, and every other sneaky, manipulative, cheating thing that they can think of to deny Harris and Walz a win if they win. (I feel very hopeful that they will win but I don't want to jinx them.)
I have a hard time believing that after everything that has happened since the 2020 election that I have a hard time believing that 70 million people will vote for Trump again this year, and I have some suspicion that 70 million people did not actually vote for him in 2020.
As far as I am concerned, Trump has never won an election. He lost decisively in 2020, and he did not win the popular vote in 2016, a thing that has only happened four times before in U.S. history.
We need to be vigilant that our elections are secure from all tampering foreign and domestic as well as those individuals who may want to deny the accurate, secure, and fair results because the people that wanted to be elected were not.
Thanks for tuning in.
 September 5, 2024 |
Good morning. Today, my colleague Nick Corasaniti explains the preparations for a potential post-election legal fight. We’re also covering a school shooting in Georgia, a rape trial in France and robot taxis. —David Leonhardt
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| Vote counting in Atlanta in 2020. Brynn Anderson/Associated Press |
The other battle
 | I’ve been reporting on efforts to undermine the election. |
There are some big clashes coming in November, both before and after Election Day.
Donald Trump and his allies have spent years sowing doubts about the integrity of American elections. They’ve falsely claimed, including through lawsuits, that voter rolls are full of ineligible voters and that mail ballots are often improperly counted. They’ve installed sympathetic officials at the state and local level who are ready to act on these accusations. They have hundreds of lawyers on standby.
At the same time, Democrats and voting rights organizations are preparing to counter such efforts. They’ve revamped a nationwide voter protection team and built a legal army of their own.
Polls suggest the presidential contest will be close. In every state where the margin is small, both sides expect a post-election battle over the outcome. (Since 2020, local officials in eight states have refused to certify various results.) The maelstrom could endanger the swift outcome that many voters expect.
I’ve spent years reporting on the gathering storm. In today’s newsletter, I’ll describe what it could look like.
The challenges
American elections don’t all look the same. Each state runs its own election, meaning that each state will likely face its own unique set of legal challenges in November. Mail ballots have emerged as targets in Pennsylvania and Nevada. The manual that governs elections in Arizona faces multiple lawsuits. Republicans say the voter rolls in several states, including Michigan, are improperly maintained. Controversies could arise in any of those places.
But the likeliest source of trouble at the moment is Georgia, which embodies Republicans’ two-pronged approach: They’ve set up new hurdles to voting and a process to stall — or even outright avoid — certifying the results if Trump loses. (In certification, local election officials are like scorekeepers at a football game, tallying up the points from each quarter to make a final, official score.)
Georgia Republicans passed a host of new election laws beginning in 2021. One changed the makeup of the State Election Board, taking power from the secretary of state — Brad Raffensperger, who declined to help Trump overturn the last election. Lawmakers can now appoint a majority of members. (I’ll return to this in a minute.) Another law expanded the ability for citizens to challenge a voter’s eligibility. Right-wing activist networks in states beyond Georgia, such as Michigan and Nevada, have been filing tens of thousands of citizen-led mass challenges.
The new laws could fuel a post-election dispute. Trump’s allies might claim, for instance, that unresolved challenges or improperly maintained voter rolls are evidence of illegal votes. Courts, secretaries of state and law enforcement have traditionally solved those issues, because local officials are not referees; in nearly every state, they must sign off on elections by a specific deadline. But this year, right-wing activists hope to assert greater control over certification, allowing them to hunt for fraud or delay the result.
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| Electronic voting booths. Erik S Lesser/EPA, via Shutterstock |
In 2024 alone, local election officials in Nevada, Michigan and Pennsylvania have refused to certify primary elections, though they’ve never overturned results. In Georgia, a crucial swing state, the State Election Board could equip county board members to do the same. Using their new 3-2 majority there, Republican appointees ruled that officials could conduct “reasonable inquiry” into elections before certifying the results. Democrats worry they will use this new power to point to any irregularities and defend a refusal to certify. Trump said the new Election Board members were “pitbulls fighting for honesty, transparency and victory.”
In a worst-case scenario, officials in any of these states could blow past the Dec. 11 deadline to submit their final certified results, throwing the election into a legal gray area. That could give their allies in Congress political cover to reject slates of electors and overturn the election result.
The counteroffensive
In previous cycles, Democrats had an expansive team of lawyers and volunteers on what’s known as a “voter protection” unit. This year, they’ve moved those people inside the legal apparatus of Kamala Harris’s campaign. They’ve also hired dozens of lawyers in battleground states.
At the same time, the Republican National Committee has a legal team of hundreds. They work with local lawyers in key swing states. Allied outside groups are also joining the battle.
The sides have already tussled in dozens of lawsuits this year, arguing over mail ballots and voter rolls. But they’ve also zeroed in on certification in the battlegrounds of Arizona, Nevada and Georgia. Democrats have asked courts to require local officials to certify elections. Trump allies want those officials to have discretion over whether to certify. Two lawsuits in Georgia are testing these ideas.
In other states, such as Arizona, courts have agreed with Democrats that both local and state officials must certify the vote by established deadlines.
Even as some voters will begin to receive absentee ballots starting tomorrow, much of the legal picture remains unsettled. New lawsuits are filed regularly, and nearly every court decision is immediately appealed. An informal judicial doctrine, known as the Purcell principle, urges judges not to change rules close to an election, but it is not binding. Just last week, a Pennsylvania court ruled that misdated mail ballots could be counted. By Monday, Republicans had already filed an appeal.
More on the election
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2409.12 - 10:10
- Days ago: MOM = 3359 days ago & DAD = 015 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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