Trump, Biden recruit lawyers
Looking to take the election to court in Florida
TALLAHASSEE — President Donald Trump and Joe Biden are still battling to get votes, but they’re also signing up thousands of lawyers and poll watchers in Florida and throughout the country in anticipation of a slew of legal challenges that could prevent the outcome from being known for weeks after Election Day.
In fact, legal battles throughout the country have already been waged over voter registration deadlines, deadlines to turn in mail ballots, how to correct signatures on mail-in ballots, and drop off boxes for mail ballots.
It’s no different in Florida, which both campaigns see as a crucial state with 29 electoral votes that could make the difference in a close Electoral College contest.
The specter of the state’s many election fumbles in recent history
looms large, starting with the 2000 recount, where after 36 days of legal wrangling a U.S. Supreme Court decision made George W. Bush the winner by 537 votes.
“I don’t anticipate any real problems, but I do expect there’ll be legal challenges,” said Barry Richard, a Tall a has see lawyer who represented Bush in the 2000 case. “There have already been legal challenges, but they’re different than 2000.”
Richard said the legal issues would likely be easier to sort out this time because the butterfly ballots with “hanging chads” that made determining voter intent difficult during the 2000 recount are gone. He admitted there could be a delay in counting because of the high number of mail-in votes that could arrive late.
Yet Florida’s troubled election history also includes the 2018 recount with problems getting votes counted on time in Broward and Palm Beach counties; errors in ballot printing in Broward in 2018; hacked election systems in Washington and St. Lucie counties in 2016; computer voting errors in 2006; and lines with hours-long waits in 2012.
Democrats, who have seen their fair share of narrow losses in statewide races over the past 20 years, including razor-thin margins for governor and U.S. Senate in 2018, are especially wary of anything that could cost Biden a victory in Florida.
They have been quick to denounce recent instances of foul play in Florida, such as when a Miami police officer showed up to a polling place in uniformwearing
a Trump mask on Monday, and when Democratic voters received a threatening email demanding they support Trump, which U.S. intelligence is now blaming on Iran.
“In the United States of America, we cannot and will not stand for any behavior that could intimidate voters from participating in our democracy,” Biden campaign spokeswoman Carlie Waibel said in a statement. “There are no excuses for this behavior. We are committed to making sure every Floridian can vote and every vote is counted.”
Issues in Florida
Biden allies and voters’ rights groups have also slammed the guidance from state election officials last week urging local supervisors of elections to review their voter rolls for any ex-felons who haven’t paid their fines and fees. Under the Amendment 4 law passed by Republicans, ex-felons must pay outstanding fines before their right to vote is restored, but local election officials say no one will be purged from the rolls as a result of the new guidance.
Another memo from Secretary of State Laurel Lee’s Division of Elections last week required counties to staff drop off boxes for mail-in votes 24 hours a day by elections officials ora law enforcement officer, which Democrats suspect was an attempt to restrict access and throw confusion onto mail-in votes.
Marc Elias, a Democratic attorney with the Perkins Coie firm, is working in conjunction with the Biden campaign and recruiting lawyers to help expand voting rights and rules.
He’s had setbacks in Florida, where he represented U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson in his losing reelection effort during the 2018 recount, falling short to Rick Scott by 10,000 votes. A federal appeals court in April also rejected Elias’ arguments to overturn the Florida law that lists the candidate of the governor’s party on the ballot first. Democrats claimed the firstchoice appearance put them at a slight disadvantage – enough to decide Florida elections, even though Democrats passed the law when they held power in the state.
But Elias has had a series of wins in other states recently, including a U.S. Supreme Court decision on Monday allowing Pennsylvania to count mail ballots received three days after Election Day and a federal appeals court Tuesday approving more time for mail-in voters in North Carolina to fix, or “cure,” ballots if there was an issue, such as a missing signature, that would cause it to be rejected.
Other voter access issues are crop ping up around the country as well, including a fight over efforts by California Republicans to set up unofficial drop boxes for mail ballots, long early voting lines in Florida and Georgia, and online voter registration systems that went downon the deadline to register in Florida and Virginia, where both states extended the deadline.
Ben Gibson of the Shutts & Bowen firm is running the Trump team’s legal efforts in Florida.
Neither campaign, though, was eager to talk about their plans or legal strategies. Both declined to answer questions for this story.
Both would prefer to get their voters to the polls and avoid a close election where a lawsuit could decide the winner. But they each have a mutual distrust of the other side and are ready to present their case to a judge if the margin is close and there is a mad dash to count late mail-in ballots and provisional ballots.
Provisional ballots could be key. They are cast when there’s an issue at the voting booth, such as a lack of identification or a voter’s name isn’t on the roll. A voter can return with proof and have their vote counted, but provisional ballots aren’t automatically counted in the initial unofficial tallies.
Pollwatchers
In addition to the lawyers, poll watchers have signed up for each campaign in record numbers. There are 434 poll watchers for Trump in Orange County, and 368 for Biden – records for both parties.
Poll workers aren’t allowed to interfere with election officials or poll workers and can’t engage with voters or wear campaign paraphernalia. But they can alert campaigns to issues at polling places such as long lines or downed vote tabulators that could disrupt the voting process and potentially play into future legal challenges.
Charles Hart, chairman of the Orange County Republican Party, said Trump pollwatchers are only there to ensure a fair process.
“We’re not trying to impute bad intentions to anybody,” Hart said. “All we want to do is make sure that the system is fair, and that everybody plays by the same rules.”
Rep. Anna Eskamani, an Orlando Democrat who helped recruit pollwatchers in Orange for the Biden campaign, said Democratic pollwatchers will also be on the lookout for cases of voter intimidation such as Trump partisans openly carrying guns outside polling places, for instance.
But she wants Democrats to ignore the potential issues surrounding the election and cast a ballot, despite Trump’s repeated attempts to cast doubt on the process.
“A lot of this is driven by the President’s agenda to create havoc and fear among our elections officials,” Eskamani said. “Unfortunately the national rhetoric perpetuates a lot of these concerns and sets an expectation of litigation, but what I want folks toknow is vote. You’ve got poll watchers from both sides helping to ensure this process is clear cut and no one’s turned away from a polling location.”
And yet she’s prepared to help Democratic voters who cast provisional ballots sign affidavit s after Election Day to ensure their votes are counted, as she did in 2018 when initial counts from Broward were delayed, she said.
With all of the intense focus on Florida, local election officials are warning that the results might not be known on election night and will be delayed further by any lawsuits.
Leon County Supervisor of Elections called lawsuits his “worst nightmare,” and although he acknowledged “reasonable” lawsuits could be needed he’s wary of lawsuits filed for political effect rather than to correct a real issue with the vote.
“[Lawsuits] can be weaponized,” Earley said. “Weaponized lawsuits don’t really help to get to the right answer of what the results are.”