The Republican National Committee has implemented a dual line of election integrity efforts for Election Day, with more than 200,000 volunteer poll watchers across the country and a team of attorneys working between Washington and the Trump campaign’s headquarters in Florida.
An RNC official told The Washington Times that they have paid staff in 18 states, including seven battlegrounds in the presidential election, and in states such as California and New York for key Senate and congressional races. According to ABC News, the RNC effort includes roughly 5,000 volunteer attorneys.
The paid staff are focused on election integrity efforts involving the recruitment and training of volunteers about what to watch out for at the polls.
“We want to have a significant group of volunteer lawyers as well, who throughout early voting and Election Day are set up in legal war rooms,” the RNC official said, noting they will field inquiries and feedback from the poll watchers deployed throughout the country. “A lot of things observed at the polls can be fixed in real time.”
That hasn’t stopped a flurry of election-related legal battles from hitting the courts. According to The Associated Press, most of the cases involve mail-in balloting.
A Georgia judge this month struck down new election rules that had required ballots to be hand-counted at the polls. The Democratic National Committee brought that lawsuit and the RNC has appealed, according to ABC. And the Department of Justice has sued Virginia for removing illegal residents from its voter rolls.
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Florida, meanwhile, has sued the feds for not helping state officials purge noncitizens from the voter rolls.
Election litigation has long been a common occurrence, but the AP reported this week that litigation has increased dramatically in recent years, nearly tripling since 2000.
Marc Elias, a Democrat-aligned lawyer who founded Democracy Docket, said roughly 180 lawsuits have been filed this year, the AP noted. Mr. Elias is said to be advising Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign on legal efforts.
Ms. Harris this week told NBC News that her campaign “has the resources” to fight Mr. Trump if he contests the election results.
“We will deal with election night and the days after as they come, and we have the resources and expertise to focus on that,” the vice president said.
According to ABC News, Ms. Harris has a centralized team of roughly half a dozen lawyers examining election claims, led by Dana Remus, who headed legal efforts for President Biden’s 2020 campaign. The New York Times reported that the campaign’s legal team will oversee hundreds of lawyers and thousands of volunteers.
The Harris campaign told ABC they have been building up their legal effort — including a post-election plan — since Mr. Biden took office in 2021. Ms. Harris took over Mr. Biden’s campaign efforts as the Democratic nominee when the president stepped aside after a poor debate performance in July
“We’ve brainstormed the worst scenarios, and are ready to go if we see them,” Maury Riggan, general counsel for the Harris campaign, told ABC News.
Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles said this month that it is unlikely the Supreme Court will get involved in 2024 lawsuits, aside from a Bush v. Gore situation.
“There is reason to believe that the court will stay out of the election in any major way unless we have a close election à la Florida in 2000 or in the unlikely event that elected or election officials seek to subvert the outcome of the vote,” Mr. Hasen wrote in an article published by Slate.
In 2000, the Supreme Court ended a ballot recount in Florida that secured George W. Bush’s victory over Al Gore.
David Becker, executive director of The Center for Election Innovation & Research, said that if the election were to come down to one state, there would most definitely be litigation.
“Both sides are going to be lawyered up,” he said.
But Mr. Becker said most pre-election litigation is designed to sow disinformation and cause voters to question the security surrounding the democratic process.
“These lawsuits are designed to plant the seeds of doubt in voters’ minds for an election,” he said.
Spokespeople for the Harris campaign and the Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment about their legal efforts.
The Democratic National Committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Associated Press reported in June that Mr. Biden’s campaign and his allies on the Democratic National Committee have opened hundreds of campaign offices nationwide.
DNC spokesperson Alex Floyd said 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,” the AP reported.
• Jeff Mordock contributed to this story, which is based in part on wire service reports.
• Alex Swoyer can be reached at aswoyer@washingtontimes.com.
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