Democrats are growing concerned that Republicans are planting lawsuits to overturn Trump’s defeat

WASHINGTON — Republicans are waging a series of legal battles in battleground states ahead of the November election, raising suspicions among Kamala Harris and her Democratic allies that the underlying goal is to cast doubt on the outcome if Donald Trump loses .

In Georgia, the Republican-controlled state board of elections is trying to give local officials the power to decide for themselves if something untoward happened during the election, which can slow down the process of identifying the winner.

In Michigan, Republicans are suing over whether the city of Detroit hired enough GOP poll workers, and in North Carolina, they say the state’s voter rolls could allow non-citizens to vote.

All these statements look different on the surface. But the Harris campaign says there’s a pattern linking them: Trump and his Republican allies want to sow confusion about the outcome if he loses. Democrats have filed legal filings in at least one case expressing doubts about what they say is the true purpose of the GOP litigation.

A defeated Trump could cite the cases to revive his baseless claim that election procedures are flawed in ways that should overturn the result, Harris campaign officials say. Trump and his allies filed dozens of unsuccessful lawsuits after the 2020 election, in a flurry of false claims of voter fraud that culminated in a mob storming the US Capitol on Jan. 6 to try to prevent Joe Biden’s victory from being certified.

“We think every case they’ve filed is a brick in the foundation of an argument they’re going to make in November to say the election is rigged,” said a Harris campaign official, speaking on condition of anonymity. “That’s basically our view of what their dispute is. That’s why we’re ready, we’re winning in court, and we’re going to make sure these elections are free and fair.”

Trump’s campaign referred questions to the Republican National Committee.

An RNC spokeswoman, Claire Zunk, said in a prepared statement: “President Trump’s election integrity effort is dedicated to protecting every legal vote, mitigating threats to the voting process, and securing elections. As Democrats continue their election meddling against President Trump and the American people, our operation faces their schemes and prepares for November.”

With rare exceptions in American politics, the two-month span between the election and Inauguration Day tends to be quiet. That was not the case in 2020, when Trump worked to overturn the result and stay in office.

He still faces federal criminal charges stemming from that quixotic endeavor. He was indicted by special counsel Jack Smith on charges of attempting to defraud the American public and voter fraud in several states, but the trial has been delayed and is unlikely to take place before the election. Trump has denied wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty.

Both parties are preparing for a contested post-election period. Chris LaCivita, Trump’s co-campaign manager, suggested at a Politico event over the summer that Democrats might try to overturn the results if Trump wins: “It’s not over until he gets his hands on the Bible and takes the oath. It’s not over until then. It didn’t end on election day. It ended on Inauguration Day, because I wouldn’t put anything past anybody.”

Democrats began preparations years ago, with lawyers drafting documents in anticipation that Republican officeholders might, for example, refuse to certify election results, a second Harris campaign official said.

“This is the most prepared Democratic campaign right now because we knew it was coming,” the official said. “It’s essential to have these people in the states who know the law and the players and who have lived through 2020. We saw what happened there and learned from it.”

Among other legal challenges, Republicans opposed Arizona’s election procedures manual and Nevada law allowing mail-in ballots to be counted after Election Day as long as they were pre-stamped.

Ground zero could be Georgia, a state Biden won in 2020 and which Harris is struggling to hold onto. Trump faces criminal charges in Georgia for his efforts to overturn his defeat in the state four years ago. He pleaded not guilty.

At issue this year is whether county election boards in Georgia are free to use their own discretion in certifying election results. Georgia’s Republican-controlled Board of Elections voted 3-2 last month to expand local officials’ powers, allowing them to certify results after conducting a “reasonable inquiry” into their accuracy. There was no definition of what constitutes a “reasonable investigation”.

Trump praised the three Republicans who voted in favor of the rules as “pit bulls” for honesty.

But Democrats warn the new rules could disrupt the hard-and-fast timeline for certifying Georgia elections. Moreover, local election boards have never held that kind of authority and should only perform the simple task of appropriating vote totals, Democrats argue. If someone alleges that there was fraud during the election, the proper place to test that claim is the courts, they add.

“If someone thinks there’s a reason to throw out the ballots, that’s a decision that’s made by the courts,” Sara Tindall Ghazal, the lone Democrat on the Georgia State Board of Elections, said in an interview. “This is not a decision made by a partisan body of civilians on election boards, many of whom have no experience in any of this other than their partisan affiliations.”

Justin Levitt, a Loyola School of Law professor of election law and a former Biden White House official who specializes in democracy and voting rights, said the role of a county election board is tantamount to a mere addition.

“It’s a process of saying 1 + 1 equals 2. It doesn’t mean ‘1 + 1 equals, I don’t know if there are bamboo fibers in the ballots.’ That’s not what they (local election commissions) are for,” he said, referring to a conspiracy theory circulating in 2020 about fraudulent ballots in Asia.

The Democratic National Committee sued the board last week to block the new procedures from taking effect.

In its filing, the commission argued that the new rule “would introduce substantial uncertainty into the post-election process” and “invite chaos by establishing new processes inconsistent with existing statutory duties.”

Both the Harris and Trump campaigns wield broad legal power over the election and its aftermath. An RNC memo released in February said the committee was involved in 78 lawsuits in 23 states.

“Should Democrats choose to continue their attacks on election safeguards until Election Day, we will be prepared to litigate and ensure that elections are fair, transparent, legal and accurate,” Zunk said.

The Harris campaign says it has retained hundreds of attorneys spread across the country to protect its legal interests. Leading the team’s legal election protection efforts is Dana Remus, Biden’s former White House counsel.

The campaign is also getting outside help. Jim Messina, who ran Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, has launched a political action committee that can raise unlimited amounts of money and will also help with courtroom efforts. Norm Eisen, special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee on Trump’s first impeachment trial, is outside counsel to the group.

One casualty of disputed election results is public confidence in the system, election experts warn. Voters come to feel that democracy is broken and may react either by refusing to participate or by becoming angry.

Trump fueled doubts about the credibility of American elections in both victory and defeat.

When he won in 2016, he baselessly claimed that he only lost the popular vote because millions of people voted illegally for his opponent, Hillary Clinton. And when he lost in 2020, he claimed the election was “rigged” in Biden’s favor.

Although he lost California by more than five million votes that year, Trump recently said he would win the state if Jesus Christ or, alternatively, an honest mortal counted the votes.

“Trump said if it wasn’t for the rigging, he would have won California. It’s like saying if it wasn’t for the gimmick, I’d be a supermodel,” Messina said.

In the years since Trump advanced false claims of voter fraud, the partisan divide over election integrity has deepened. A poll last year found that only 22 percent of Republicans were very confident that votes in the 2024 presidential election would be counted accurately, compared to 71 percent of Democrats.

“We already have members of the public who are 100 percent convinced that there is no way to have free and fair elections in Georgia,” Ghazal said.

Many of the Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 did so in the mistaken belief that he had been robbed of victory in 2020. The first rioter to break into the building, Michael Sparks, told the judge at a hearing last week , that he believes “to this day” that the election was stolen from Trump. Sparks was sentenced to more than four years in prison.

Some election experts fear that Trump’s voters are likely to turn to violence again if he loses in November.

“I’m concerned about the potential for chaos,” Levitt said. “For those who are told that the election is stolen, taking to the streets is very natural when you believe that you do not have the power to affect the outcome peacefully.”

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com