Republicans in Court

After it was announced that Joe Biden had won the election, rumors saying that President Trump is going to sue started stirring up.  Trump began spreading theories of “major fraud” coming from the democratic party and that the election is “rigged”.  Trump and other Republican officials have now filed over two dozen lawsuits after finding out Biden had won the election. Trump’s campaign has filed local, state, and federal lawsuits against Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, and Pennsylvania.  The lawsuits claim that states and counties have violated election laws and that they discredited the results of the 2020 election. 

The Trump campaign initially won a lawsuit in Pennsylvania because the judge said first-time voters must confirm their ids with the county board but this ruling was later overturned by the state supreme court.  Trump and other Republicans have lost or withdrawn 19 cases and there are still seven pending.  

There were 3 cases in Nevada that the republicans have lost and one that is still pending. The Trump campaign filed a lawsuit requesting that Nevada stop counting their votes over concerns of signature matching, Nevada supreme court denied the request. The RNC filed a lawsuit with the Trump campaign in state court for asking for the ballots to stop being counted in Clark county. A district judge denied the request saying that they didn’t have enough evidence to back up their allegations. Republicans repealed the case and went to the Nevada supreme court where they later withdrew the case. A group of republicans sued Clark county to invalidate their mail-in ballots including the ones sent in by the military.  

In Georgia, there were two losses and one is still pending.  In Chatham county, a judge denied the Trump campaign’s request to toss out 53 ballots a GOP poll watcher said arrived after the polls had closed at 7 p.m. on November 3.  The poll watcher provided no proof of this in court and other county officials have testified that the ballots came in on time.  Republican elector Lin Wood, whose attorney also represents the Trump campaign, requested to stop vote certification.  He argued that his rights as an individual have been infringed upon because the Georgia secretary of state allowed signature matching on ballots, a measure taken to prevent voter fraud.  A state judge dismissed the case stating that it made no sense in fact or law. Sidney Powell filed a federal lawsuit alleging widespread election fraud, a judge hasn’t decided on the case yet. 

In Pennsylvania, there have been 10 losses for the republicans and two are pending.  The Trump campaign and republican national committee filed a lawsuit requesting that a state appeals court to reject the Pennsylvania secretary of state’s announcement that voters had until the 12 of November to turn their ballots, which Trump won but the state supreme court overruled the lower court’s decision.  The Trump campaign sued over alleged irregularities in the ballot counting throughout the state.  They said that 14,000 votes should be trashed. The judge threw out the case saying that Trump’s attorney presented the court with  “strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations, unpaid in the operative complaint and unsupported by evidence”.  Trump also lost the appeal.  A federal lawsuit by Republicans to delay the deadline request was also filed but rejected by the judge.  Another federal lawsuit requested that Montgomery County Board of Elections stop allowing voters to “cure” their ballots but the republicans abandoned the lawsuit and withdrew the case.