Several hundred volunteer lawyers plan to be in swing states on Election Day, ready to watch for irregularities or errors that could be addressed by the courts.
Since 2000, when the Supreme Court ended a ballot recount in Florida that secured George W. Bush’s victory over Al Gore, both major political parties have regularly deployed legal teams and poll monitors in key states before presidential elections.
The Republican Party, at the national and state levels, is training poll observers and lawyers to flag concerns about ballots and Election Day procedures to avoid voter paranoia and prevent another Bush v. Gore scenario.
Claire Zunk, the Republican National Committee’s communications director for election integrity, said former President Donald Trump’s efforts aim to ensure that every legal vote is protected and threats to the voting process are minimized.
“While Democrats continue their election interference against President Trump and the American people, our operation is confronting their schemes and preparing for November. Should the Democrats choose to continue their attacks on election safeguards through Election Day, we will be prepared to litigate and ensure the election is fair, transparent, legal, and accurate,” Ms. Zunk said in an email.
The former president has accused Democratic prosecutors of using criminal charges against him as a form of election interference, including his upcoming sentencing in New York for a conviction stemming from his hush money trial in Manhattan. On Friday, his sentencing was postponed until after the election.
Mr. Trump and his allies have raised concerns that noncitizens could cast ballots and that the use of mail-in ballots could lead to fraud.
American First Legal sued all 15 of Arizona’s counties in an attempt to remove noncitizens from its voter rolls. The organization announced last week that it had filed an amended complaint in that litigation, which is pending less than two months before the Nov. 5 elections.
The Public Interest Legal Foundation has filed lawsuits in Nevada to clean up the state’s voter rolls so absentee ballots aren’t sent to noncitizens or incorrect commercial addresses.
In 2020, Mr. Trump and allied lawyers filed more than 60 lawsuits to try to get courts to review what they said were election-related irregularities.
Some of that litigation focused on the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The claims centered on alleged fraud related to voting machines and mail-in ballots.
All those lawsuits were shut down.
North Carolina, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Georgia are swing states likely to have Republican legal teams and poll observers on Election Day.
Jason Simmons, chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party, said the party would recruit and train more than 500 volunteer lawyers to assist in the November election cycle.
North Carolina had roughly 500 volunteer lawyers in 2020 and more than 600 during the 2022 cycle.
“These attorneys are scattered across the state and, in many instances, are there on a moment’s notice where if we have an issue during early vote — and especially then on Election Day — can assist in reviewing what the issue may be, collecting affidavits and filing something locally if it needs to be filed,” Mr. Simmons said.
A core group of paid and unpaid lawyers is in Raleigh to assist in “legal war room activities to review escalated items that come in from across the state if it can’t be handled at the local level,” Mr. Simmons said.
Mr. Trump won North Carolina’s 15 electoral votes by roughly 1 percentage point in 2020.
Historically, the state has swayed back and forth between Republicans and Democrats. Although it favored Mr. Trump in 2020 and 2016 and Mitt Romney in 2012, it went to Barack Obama in 2008.
Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes are also part of the Rust Belt state coalition, which tends to swing between the parties.
Joseph R. Biden won the state by roughly 0.6 percentage points in 2020, whereas Mr. Trump won the state by 0.77% percentage points in 2016.
Several hundred lawyers will be on the ground in Wisconsin flagging any irregularities this election cycle.
Republican officials from state parties in other key swing states, such as Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Georgia, did not respond to a request for comment about their litigation efforts and planning ahead of Election Day.
Officials from the Democratic National Committee and Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign did not respond to a request for comment about their legal teams’ efforts.
State Democratic Party officials in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Arizona and Georgia also did not respond to requests for comment.
Poll observers are trained to watch for abnormalities at polling centers and to properly inspect absentee ballots.
Lawyers deployed throughout swing states generally focus on mundane issues. They consider what happens if a polling location opens late, a voting machine goes down, or a voting site loses electricity or runs out of ballots.
David Becker, an election law expert who worked in the Clinton and Bush administrations, said no election is perfect and problems are inevitable.
“That happens, considering we have hundreds of thousands of polling sites on Election Day,” said Mr. Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research. “This is why transparency is so important.
“Good-faith actors serving as observers for either party of either candidate play an essential role,” he said.
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. Mr. Biden dropped out of the presidential contest in July, and Ms. Harris became the Democratic nominee.
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,” AP reported.
• Alex Swoyer can be reached at aswoyer@washingtontimes.com.
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