Republicans losing big in legal fights claiming voter fraud before election
Election-related lawsuits are being filed thick and fast across the country — but the Republican Party's legal challenges are proving largely unsuccessful.
Politico reported Tuesday that the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals "declined to allow" a North Carolina court to hear a Republican suit asking for additional verification for 225,000 voters. According to the ruling, the case should be in federal court.
That ruling "likely precludes any relief for the Republican Party in the case, since federal courts rarely order state election officials to change voting procedures shortly before Election Day," said Politico.
Also Read: The Purge is real: Inside the GOP's 2024 playbook to disenfranchise voters
In another lawsuit brought by a group of Republican members of Congress, an attempt was made to change "procedures" for overseas ballots. It didn't go well.
U.S. District Judge Christopher Conner, appointed by George W. Bush, said in the ruling that the members caused an “inexcusable delay” in bringing the litigation so close to the election. He said the suit comes from “phantom fears of foreign malfeasance," quoted Politico.
“Plaintiffs sought an order directing the county boards of elections to segregate ballots for potential exclusion and to impose new verification procedures,” Conner said about an overseas ballot challenge involving Pennsylvania.
“An injunction at this late hour would upend the Commonwealth’s carefully laid election administration procedures to the detriment of untold thousands of voters, to say nothing of the state and county administrators who would be expected to implement these new procedures on top of their current duties," he continued.
Another case was decided last week in Virginia, where a federal judge agreed with the Justice Department's complaint that Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) tried to make "significant updates" to voter rolls. Youngkin said he wanted to protect the election from non-citizens who might be voting.
Announced Monday afternoon, the Nevada state Supreme Court ruled that mail-in ballots without a post-mark could be counted up to three days after the election.
Bloomberg News called it, "a setback for the national GOP organization in Nevada, where polls show a tight race in the presidential contest between Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris."
“If we measure success in terms of favorable results or winning lawsuits, the effort has been basically a total failure,” said election law expert Leah Tulin from the Brennan Center told CNN. “There are still a lot of those cases pending, but they haven’t really moved, and we don’t expect most of them to move, or certainly to have favorable results in them before the election.”
A GOP success came from the conservative 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which overturned a Mississippi precedent that said mail-in ballots must be received by Election Day. Previous rules allowed for the ballots to be post-marked on Election Day.
The ruling sent legal analysts rushing to social media to cry foul that this ruling would apply to the 2024 election.