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“This is the most prepared that any Democratic campaign has been at this point, because we knew this was coming," the official said. "It’s critical to have these people in the states who know the law and the players and have lived through 2020, saw what happened there and learned from it.”
Among other legal challenges, Republicans have opposed Arizona’s election procedures manualand Nevada’s law allowing mail ballotsto be counted after Election Day as long as they were postmarked beforehand.
Ground zero might be Georgia, a state that Biden narrowly won in 2020 and that Harris is aggressively working to hold. Trump faces criminal charges in Georgia over his efforts to overturn his defeat in the state four years ago. He has 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. The Republican-controlled State Election Board voted 3-2 last month to expand the powers of local officials, enabling them to certify results after having conducted a “reasonable inquiry” into their accuracy. There was no definition of what a "reasonable inquiry" entails.
Trump has praised the three Republicans who voted for the rules as “pit bulls” for honesty.
But Democrats caution that the new rules could disrupt the hard-and-fast timetable to certify elections in Georgia. Furthermore, local election boards have never had that kind of authority, and they are supposed to perform merely the straightforward task of adding up the vote totals, Democrats argue. If anyone alleges fraud occurred in an election, the proper place to test the claim is the courts, they add.
“If someone thinks that there’s a reason to throw out ballots, that’s a decision that’s made by the courts,” Sara Tindall Ghazal, the lone Democrat on the State Election Board, said in an interview. “That is not a decision made by a partisan body of civilians on election boards, many of whom have no background in any of this other than their partisan relationships."
Justin Levitt, an election law professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles and a former Biden White House official specializing in democracy and voting rights, said the role of a county election board is tantamount to simple addition.
"It's a process of saying 1 + 1 equals 2. It's not to say, '1 + 1 equals I don't know whether there are bamboo fibers in the ballots.' That's not what they [local election boards] are there for," he said, referring to a conspiracy theory that circulated in 2020 about fraudulent ballots from Asia.
The Democratic National Committee sued the board last week to block the new procedures from taking effect. In its filing, the committee argued that the new rule would “introduce substantial uncertainty in the post-election process” and “invite chaos by establishing new processes at odds with existing statutory duties."
Both the Harris and the Trump campaigns are deploying ample legal muscle for the election and its aftermath. An RNC memo released in February said the committee was involved in 78 lawsuits in 23 states.
“Should the Democrats choose to continue their attacks on election safeguards through Election Day, we will be prepared to litigate and ensure the election is fair, transparent, legal, and accurate,” said Zunk, the RNC spokesperson.
The Harris campaign says it has retained hundreds of attorneys spread throughout the country to protect her legal interests. Heading the team’s legal election protection efforts is Dana Remus, Biden’s former White House counsel.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/democrats-grow-concerned-republicans-are-planting-seeds-legal-suits-ov-rcna168961