Republicans and Democrats Election Preparations

Aakhir Tak – In Shorts

Democrats and Republicans are preparing for the upcoming US presidential election on November 5. Republicans are filing state-by-state lawsuits to contest potential losses, forcing Democrats into a defensive position. Democrats are now geared up to protect voter rights.

Aakhir Tak – In Depth

Democrats and Republicans are gearing up for the US presidential election set for November 5. The Republican Party and its allies are filing state-by-state lawsuits to contest potential electoral losses, prompting Democrats to adopt a defensive posture due to concerns about post-election chaos.

Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris stated on Tuesday, “The 2020 election was free, fair, and secure, and Democrats are ensuring that 2024 is the same.” Republicans are engaged in 130 lawsuits that they claim are necessary to ensure votes are counted correctly and to prevent illegal voting. This follows former President Donald Trump’s unfounded claims of fraud in the 2020 election.

The race is tight between Vice President Harris and Trump, particularly in seven swing states that control 94 of the 270 Electoral College votes required to win. Democrats argue that their opponents’ lawsuits aim to sow doubt about the legitimacy of the election, reminiscent of the approximately 60 lawsuits filed by Trump and his allies after the 2020 election that failed to overturn his loss.

Instead of mounting a similarly proactive legal campaign, Democrats are relying largely on existing systems to ensure a fair election while attempting to thwart perceived threats to voting access or certification procedures.

This confidence stems in part from the state-level officials responsible for elections in battleground states who have dismissed Trump’s false fraud claims. These officials include governors, attorneys general, and secretaries of state from both parties.

Unlike Republicans, Democrats broadly assert that the election administration was fair in 2020 and is likely to be so again. They have been bolstered by expansions to mail-in and early voting in battleground states.

Justin Levitt, a former adviser to the Biden administration on voting access, noted, “Democrats are mostly playing defense at the moment.” This strategy was evident on Monday when a state judge in Georgia affirmed that local officials have a duty to certify elections, a setback for a Republican county election administrator who had argued she had discretion if she had concerns about the process.

The Democratic National Committee intervened, stating that the case sought to turn the routine process of certification into a search for election irregularities. “We have protected our elections from far-right Republicans trying to disrupt them,” the Harris campaign said regarding the Georgia decision.

In another Georgia case, a judge temporarily halted a new rule from the state’s conservative election board requiring poll workers to hand-count ballots. Democrats argued that this change would create chaos and delay results.

In Arizona, a judge on October 11 rejected a conservative group‘s attempt to force the state’s largest county to conduct more extensive checks to ensure non-citizens were not on voter rolls. Democrats had sought to intervene, calling the lawsuit “little more than political theatre.”

Republican National Committee spokesperson Claire Zunk accused Democrats on Tuesday of planning to dismantle election safeguards and asserted that Republicans were committed to protecting every legal vote.

In her statement, Zunk emphasized that Republicans had secured crucial wins in voting-related cases, such as a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in August reviving proof of citizenship requirements for Arizona elections and a Georgia ruling last week denying a push by voting rights groups to extend the registration deadline due to hurricanes.

Certification Battles

Since the 2020 election, over 30 local officials have either refused to certify valid election results or threatened to do so, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, a left-leaning public policy institute. However, none of these efforts have succeeded due to intervention from state officials and courts.

In the 2022 midterm elections, for instance, an Arizona state judge ruled that the board of supervisors in conservative, rural Cochise County did not have the right to block certification after Republican board members resisted due to concerns about voting machines, which the state disputed.

Judges in battleground states can issue orders compelling reluctant local officials to certify election results, and those who refuse may face civil or criminal penalties, according to the Brennan Center.

“These state administrators are largely non-partisan, professional, and competent,” stated Jennifer Victor, a political science professor at George Mason University in Virginia. “Democrats are depending on that.”