The 2024 U.S. election has entered its final stage, with the Republican Party and its allies preparing to challenge the results of the election by filing objections. They plan to bring lawsuits in each state to contest potential unfair election practices, forcing the Democratic Party to adopt defensive strategies due to concerns of post-voting chaos.
For a long time, election result certification has been a relatively obscure administrative task. However, since former President Trump attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 election, election result certification has become increasingly politicized.
According to Reuters, following the 2020 election, Trump claimed that his loss to Biden was due to election fraud and subsequently, Republicans filed 130 lawsuits. They stated that the purpose of these lawsuits was to ensure accurate counting of votes and prevent illegal voting.
In contrast to Republicans, Democrats have not responded with similar legal actions and have largely relied on the existing system to ensure the fairness of elections.
Unlike Republicans, Democrats generally believe that the 2020 election was fair and likely to be so again.
Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris’s campaign team stated on Tuesday, “The 2020 election was free, fair, and secure. The Democratic Party aims to ensure that the 2024 election is also the same.”
Justin Levitt, former voting rights advisor to the Biden administration and law professor at Loyola Marymount University, noted that Democrats and their supporters are mainly playing a defensive game at present.
This Democratic strategy was evident on Monday. In Fulton County, Georgia, Judge Robert McBurney ruled that election supervisors or members of the election and registration board could not refuse to certify or not certify election results under any circumstances. He emphasized that while they have the right to inspect the conduct of the election and review relevant documents, delays in receiving such information are not reasons for refusing to certify the election results.
Julie Adams, a Republican member of the Fulton County Board of Elections, had requested the judge to declare that as a board member, she had the discretion to have “full access” to “election materials.”
Adams’ lawsuit received support from the America First Policy Institute allied with Trump, which believes that board members of county election commissions have the right to refuse certification. In court earlier this month, Adams’s attorney argued that county election officials could certify results without including problematic ballots, alleviating concerns for board members who might otherwise vote against certification.
Judge McBurney wrote that Georgia law does not grant county election officials the power to determine fraud or what actions to take. According to the law, county election officials should document concerns about fraud or systemic errors and share with relevant authorities, but these are not reasons for officials to refuse certification.
The Democratic National Committee stated that the lawsuit attempts to morph routine certification processes into a probe for election irregularities.
Harris’s campaign team issued a statement on Tuesday regarding the Georgia decision, saying, “We protected our elections from the influence of far-right Republicans attempting to disrupt the election.”
In Arizona, a judge rejected a lawsuit on October 11 by a conservative group that sought to compel the state’s largest county to conduct a broader inspection to ensure non-citizens are not on the voter rolls. Democrats dismissed the lawsuit as “political theater,” stating that non-citizens are already barred from voting in the U.S.
Republican National Committee spokesperson Claire Zunk accused Democrats of trying to undermine election safeguards and asserted that Republicans would protect every valid ballot.
Zunk stated that the Republican Party has achieved significant victories in voting-related cases, such as the Supreme Court’s August ruling restoring the requirement for citizens’ identification for voting in Arizona. Furthermore, last week, a Georgia court rejected a voting rights group’s request to extend the registration deadline due to a hurricane.
According to the Brennan Center for Justice, over thirty local officials have refused to certify election results or threatened to do so since the 2020 election. However, these efforts have been unsuccessful due to the intervention of state officials and the judiciary.
In battleground states, judges may issue orders to compel reluctant local officials to certify election results; otherwise, they could face civil or criminal penalties.
Jennifer Victor, a political science professor at George Mason University in Virginia, stated, “The executives in these states are generally nonpartisan, professional, and competent. Democrats rely on this.”