Hundreds of voting lawsuits filed
More cases expected after polls close Tuesday
In Alabama, a Black man with Parkinson’s disease and asthma asked a court to allow curbside voting but was turned down by the U.S. Supreme Court. In Florida, 700,000 felons trying to regain their right to vote were hampered by five judges appointed by President Donald Trump. In Arkansas, three judges appointed by Republican presidents told elderly residents worried about COVID-19 exposure they could sign ballot initiatives through a window.
At the same time, arguments from Trump’s lawyers have been shot down in several states, and the president was dealt two setbacks by the Supreme Court just before Election Day in cases that expanded absentee voting – a procedure he has criticized without evidence as the source of ballot fraud.
Those outcomes are part of a recordsetting number of lawsuits that have been filed this year, with even more expected to come after polls close Tuesday. In all, more than 230 election-related federal lawsuits were filed from Jan. 1 to Oct. 23, higher than any of the past three presidential election years during the same time period, a USA TODAY analysis of federal court data found.
The outcomes have been mixed. Voting rights advocates won numerous COVid-19-related decisions that expanded access to absentee ballots, extended deadlines to count those ballots and allowed blind and disabled voters to cast their ballots electronically or by phone. Trump’s lawyers and his supporters have also scored key victories, locking in Election Day deadlines for absentee voting, limiting the number of ballot drop boxes and blocking other measures to ease voting.
The flood of litigation has been powered by the coronavirus pandemic that forced states to adjust their normal voting protocols.
Lawyers representing Trump, the Republican Party and conservative voters have warned – with little evidence – of fraud as they’ve urged courts to limit voter registration efforts, block universal mail-in voting and other pandemicrelated changes. “The electoral process cannot function properly if it lacks integrity and results in chaos,” Trump’s attorneys wrote in a Nevada lawsuit.
Supporters of Democratic nominee Joe Biden, the Democratic Party, civil rights groups and organizations representing vulnerable communities have fought back. They have urged judges to eliminate requirements that witnesses sign absentee ballots and approve postage-free envelopes for absentee ballots.
“We have seen a level of voter suppression that has really been unprecedented,” said Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
USA TODAY’S review of hundreds of lawsuits that were filed or had signifi
cant rulings in 2020 found that courts have already made pivotal decisions on who can vote, how they vote and the process used to count their votes. USA TODAY also reviewed election lawsuit data compiled and maintained by the Stanford-mit Healthy Elections Project and the Brennan Center for Justice.
The analysis found that Trump has already been assisted by the legions of federal court judges he appointed during his first term in office. The Supreme Court has played a significant role in election-related cases, issuing a series of decisions halting lower-court rulings that would have expanded voting access. The confirmation of Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Trump’s third Supreme Court nominee, further cemented the court’s 6-3 conservative majority, giving Trump and Republicans an even more significant advantage.
At times, the hyperpoliticized nature of the 2020 election cycle has contributed to lawsuits that often sound like an
angry Twitter feed.
In Michigan, a Republican state candidate argued in court documents that sending absentee ballot requests to all voters would only help “the deep state.” In Illinois, a county Republican Party accused the state’s Democratic governor of implementing an emergency election system designed to minimize Republican ballots and “if the election still doesn’t turn out the way he wants it, to generate enough Democratic ballots after election day to sway the result.”
Lawsuits initiated by Democrats and advocacy groups have accused Republican officials of purposefully curtailing the vote for constituencies that don’t support them. In Minnesota, several groups challenged a state law requiring a witness to sign absentee ballots, which they claim is discriminatory to African and Native Americans who tend to suffer from higher rates of preexisting conditions that make their communities more vulnerable to the coronavirus.