Donald Trump’s Republican allies have suffered a string of court losses in key swing states ahead of the 2024 presidential election – but it’s not stopping them from trying.
Despite a lack of evidence, Trump allies have fixated on alleged claims of illegal voting and voter roll purges across battleground states and beyond as the presidential race against Kamala Harris tightens.
The GOP said it has been involved in 130 legal cases this election cycle after it launched an initiative earlier this year around “election integrity.”
The lawsuits have largely focused on mail-in ballot procedures and non-citizen voting.
In the most recent setback, while not a swing state this election, Virginia Republicans have appealed to the Supreme Court to allow them to remove suspected non-citizens from the voter rolls after the move was blocked by a federal judge last week.
US District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles ruled last week that the state must restore voter registrations for more than 1,500 people in Virginia. Giles, a Biden-appointee, ruled that “neither side” knew for certain “that those removed from those rolls were, in fact, noncitizens.”
The decision infuriated Trump.
“This is blatantly un-American, and it’s election interference, and Kamala Harris is behind it very much,” the former president responded on Friday. “You have to get the confidence going for elections. When you have decisions coming out like that…it’s pretty sad for our country. We have enough problems with the elections. It’s about confidence.”
State officials asked the Supreme Court to act by Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Republicans have suffered several legal blows in the battleground state of Georgia.
Trump allies wanted to bring in last-minute changes to election rules that would have required poll workers to count ballots by hand, but the courts ruled against them. They also wanted to block some Americans living overseas from voting.
Experts told Reuters the losses will “make it easier” for officials in Georgia to quickly count and certify vote totals come Election Day. Richard Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, told the news outlet: “If courts had accepted some of these arguments, it could have had a huge impact on voter disenfranchisement.”
Over in Michigan and North Carolina, Republicans also tried to cast doubts on the legitimacy of some ballots cast overseas by US citizens, including members of the military, but a judge rejected the lawsuit last week, CNN reported.
A Republican National Committee-led lawsuit was also dismissed by a federal judge after it alleged Michigan’s voter rolls were inflated.
An RNC spokeswoman defended the party’s legal tactics in a statement to Reuters. “Our unprecedented election integrity operation is committed to defending the law and protecting every legal vote,” Claire Zunk said. “We have engaged, and won, in record numbers of legal battles to secure our election.”
