Republicans are suing to disqualify voters in battleground states

GOP-backed lawsuits challenging ballots are playing out in battleground states ahead of Election Day

In a scathing opinion issued hours before Election Day, a Michigan judge rejected a spurious lawsuit from a Republican candidate that sought to throw out thousands of absentee ballots from Detroit voters.

A lawsuit from GOP candidate for secretary of state Kristina Karamo – who would serve as the state’s chief elections officer, if elected – sought to make Detroiters either vote in person or obtain an absentee ballot in person, a “clear violation” of their constitutional rights, according to Wayne County Circuit Court Chief Judge Timothy Kenny.

“Plaintiffs have raised a false flag of election law violations and corruption concerning Detroit’s procedures,” he wrote in the ruling on 7 November. “This Court’s ruling takes down that flag.”

Judge Kenny said the plaintiffs’ lawsuit “would create the potential harm of disenfranchising tens of thousands of Detroiters” on Election Day in the majority-Black city. “This is unacceptable and cannot be permitted.”

The legal challenge is among several GOP-backed lawsuits to disqualify voters playing out in battleground states as midterm elections are underway to determine the balance of power in Congress and in state legislatures across the US.

In a case siding with the Republican National Committee, Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court determined that election officials should reject ballots that do not have a date on the outer envelope, even if those ballots arrived before Election Day.

Thousands of such ballots – enough to determine the outcomes of close races in the state – have been set aside as election administrators scrambled to remedy them.

In Wisconsin, the Republican chair of the state Assembly’s elections committee filed a lawsuit that would force elections officials in the state to stop counting military ballots until they can be verified.

Legal challenges from right-wing activists, a Republican state lawmaker and two GOP candidates in Texas have also sought to disqualify tens of thousands of voters in Harris County who dropped their ballots at drive-thru polling places.

In all, 120 cases surrounding the electoral process have been filed as of 3 November, according to Democracy Docket. By comparison, 68 election-related lawsuits were filed by Election Day in 2020.

But roughly one-quarter of those challenges have been backed by GOP groups or the Republican National Committee.

The legal blitz also comes as Republican candidates and officials – including Donald Trump – are urging supporters to only cast their ballots on Election Day, an apparent attempt to create a separate voting bloc of Republican voters against people who vote absentee, who are more likely to be Democratic-leaning voters.

Mr Trump has spent years undermining the electoral process, from his baseless claim that “millions” of illegal votes were cast in the 2016 election, which he won, to his attacks against the legitimacy of mail-in and absentee ballots in the lead up to the 2020 election, before a single one was cast.

GOP-backed lawsuits then have tried to toss out those ballots as illegitimate, or rejected entirely for minor issues with few chances for voters to correct them.

They also have targeted poll workers, increasing partisan scrutiny that accuses the offices and people who help run the nation’s election of wrongdoing, which voting rights advocates fear could fuel threats against them and provide a pretext for subverting election outcomes.

Meanwhile, in Georgia, more than 1,000 voters in one of the state’s largest counties never received their requested absentee ballots, prompting a lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union, Southern Poverty Law Center and Dechert LLP.

The lawsuit asked the state to immediately send ballots to hundreds of voters and extend a deadline for their return to 14 November, the same deadline for absentee voters in the military or overseas.

On 7 November, Cobb County Superior Court issued an emergency ruling to send those ballots by overnight delivery.

While the county reports that it mailed out more than 200 absentee ballots, hundreds are still unaccounted for, according to the lawsuit.

“There is a direct correlation between the state’s sweeping anti-voter law … and Cobb County’s failure to get [more than 1,000] registered voters their absentee ballots,” according to a statement from Rahul Garabadu, ACLU of Georgia’s senior voting rights attorney.

Georgia’s “Election Integrity Act,” or Senate Bill 202, cut the amount of time that voters have to request an absentee ballot from 180 days to 77 days. The application deadline also was moved up two weeks, giving voters a smaller window to collect and mail their ballots, which have “unnecessarily burdened elections officials and absentee voters,” according to the ACLU.

“The anti-voter law put tremendous pressure on elections officials to accomplish a number of responsibilities under a very tight deadline, and in Cobb County, that pressure has resulted in a huge error and hundreds of voters at risk of being disenfranchised,” according to Mr Garabadu.