05/10/2024

The Trump campaign filed its first election lawsuit of the 2024 election season, as the Republican National Committee seeks to undermine the election process in multiple states. In Louisiana, the legal drama over the state’s legislative and congressional maps continues this week with an emergency request to the U.S. Supreme Court. Over in Georgia, lawmakers passed a package of voter suppression laws in the key battleground state.

Trump campaign files first election lawsuit of 2024

Former President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign brought its first election lawsuit of the season in Nevada, a key battleground state in this year’s election.

The lawsuit was brought on behalf of the Trump campaign, the Republican National Committee (RNC) and a voter against Nevada’s Democratic secretary of state. It takes aim at the state’s mail-in ballot receipt deadline, which allows elections officials to count mail-in ballots received on or before 5 p.m. on Nov. 9, as long as the ballots are postmarked by Election Day (Nov. 5).

If the postmark of a mail-in ballot is unclear, election officials may presume it was postmarked for Election Day if it was received no later than 5 p.m. on the third day following an election, according to Nevada law.  

The Nov. 9 deadline, Republicans argue, allegedly violates the U.S. Constitution and federal law, which set Election Day for presidential and congressional elections. Trump’s campaign is asking a federal district court in Nevada to find the deadline unconstitutional and block the state from counting ballots received after Election Day.

The arguments are far from novel. In fact, the RNC is making virtually the same argument in another case in Mississippi, where the Republican group and others are challenging a state law allowing mail-in ballots that are postmarked on or before Election Day to be counted if they’re received within five business days of the election.

The plaintiffs claim that only mail-in ballots received on or before Election Day can be legally counted, and are asking a court to block the state’s deadline.

The Mississippi case and others like it seem to underscore a broader strategy from the RNC to create precedent that could be used to disenfranchise voters throughout multiple states in 2024, Democracy Docket recently reported. According to Democracy Docket’s database, the RNC is currently involved in 31 active voting-related cases across the country.

If 2020 is any indication, the Nevada case will likely be the first of many from the Trump campaign and its Republican allies, who’ve already begun flooding the courts with litigation over voter roll maintenance, signature matching and other issues related to the election process.

But on the other side of the aisle, Democrats are pushing back.

In March, the Democratic National Committee sought to disprove the plaintiffs’ claims. “The federal statutes providing for the election to occur on election day require only that the voters’ choice of candidate occur by election day,” the DNC asserts in an amicus brief filed in the Mississippi case.

“Nothing in federal law prohibits states from counting votes received later so long as the final choice has occurred by election day. No conflict thus exists between federal law and Mississippi’s Ballot Receipt Deadline, and all of Plaintiffs’ claims fail for that reason.”

Will Black Louisiana voters get the maps they deserve?

It’s not everyday that civil rights groups and state powers align on the same side of a lawsuit. But as the 2024 election season gets closer, Louisiana and its voters are trying to get a congressional map in place sooner rather than later.

This week, both the state and a group of Black voters and civil rights groups asked the U.S. Supreme Court, in separate filings, for relief from a district court ruling that recently struck down a newly enacted congressional map featuring two majority-Black districts.

On Wednesday, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and other attorneys filed an emergency application on behalf of Black voters seeking an expedited ruling from the Court, asking it to allow the congressional map to remain in place while they appeal the lower court ruling. That request comes a day after the state attorney general filed her own appeal to the high Court, seeking to reverse the same lower court ruling that prohibits Louisiana from using its newly drawn map. The state is also expected to file an emergency petition to the Court.

The recent activity stems from a federal district court ruling that found that the map, which Louisiana’s Republican governor signed into law in January, was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.

The creation of that map was intended to help resolve a yearslong saga that began in 2022, when Black voters and civil rights groups challenged a previous version of the map — which had only one majority-Black district. The courts concluded that the original map violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

But once the new map with two majority-Black districts was approved, a group of 12 individuals who identified identified themselves as “non-African American voters,” filed a lawsuit against the state over the new map, alleging that it’s an unconstitutional racial gerrymander in violation of the 14th and 15th Amendments. A review of some of the plaintiffs’ social media accounts by Democracy Docket shows that at least a few of the individuals are white.

In a ruling handed down Tuesday, the same federal district court that struck down the congressional map stated that lawmakers are allowed to enact a new congressional map during the state’s legislative session. But while that’s pending, the court will also proceed with plans to draw a remedial map “to ensure that a compliant map is in place in time for the 2024 congressional election.”

The court set a May 17 deadline for the parties to submit map proposals and a May 24 deadline for each party to respond. At the end of the month, on May 30, the court will hold a hearing in which parties will be allowed to make arguments.

Now, Louisiana is trying to not only get a congressional map in place, but it’s also seeking to enact a legislative map that complies with the Voting Rights Act after a group of Black voters and civil rights groups sued the state in 2022, alleging an older version of the maps violated Section 2 of the VRA. The court struck down the maps in February.

In an order issued last week, a federal judge said the court will move forward with remedial proceedings if the Legislature fails to enact VRA-compliant state House and Senate maps by the end of the session on June 3.

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Georgia governor signs package of voter suppression laws

In Georgia, a GOP-led swing state that turned blue for President Joe Biden in 2020, Republican legislators passed a package of voter suppression laws that will drastically change how elections are run in the Peach State ahead of the 2024 elections.

Republican Gov. Brian Kemp this week signed three proposals into law — one of which would make it easier for Georgia residents to formally challenge a voter’s eligibility, despite the state already having a law on the books that allows this.

Senate Bill 189 takes the previous law passed in 2021 — which allows residents to challenge as many voters’ eligibility in their county as they wish — even further by not placing any limits on which factors can be used to make a valid claim.

The new law also allows voters to be removed from the rolls up until 45 days before an election — a violation of the National Voter Registration Act, which bans the removal of voters within 90 days of a federal election. And it allows a presidential candidate from any political party to be on the ballot as long as they’ve qualified for the ballot in at least 20 other states.

Altogether, the legislative package will likely precipitate a number of election law challenges ahead of, during and after the 2024 general election. This election season could also be déjà vu for voters who saw the state become a hotbed of conspiracy theories about ballot harvesting and widespread voter fraud — all of which were demonstrably false — as both Biden and Trump sought the state’s 16 electoral votes in 2020.

Former Georgia gubernatorial candidate and state legislator Stacey Abrams slammed the new law on the social media platform X, writing that S.B. 189 “is surgically designed to disenfranchise Black and brown voters & seniors and puts a cruel target on Georgia's homeless population.”

Moreover, there’s a looming indictment in Georgia against Trump and many of his allies in connection with Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in the Peach State. The top prosecutor in that case, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, is currently facing an effort to get her removed from the case over allegations about an affair that created a conflict of interest.

On Wednesday, the Court of Appeals of the State of Georgia granted an appeal request from Trump to reconsider a lower court ruling that allowed Willis to remain on the case.

Trump and 18 people in his campaign and legal team were indicted last year on 41 felony charges related to the 2020 election subversion scheme. Trump faces a total 13 charges, including violating the state’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.

OPINION: When Trump Attacks Our Elections, We Will Have No Excuse

When asked last week if he’d accept the results of the 2024 election, Trump’s answer sounded awfully familiar. “If everything’s honest, I’ll gladly accept the results. I don’t change on that,” Trump told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. "If it's not, you have to fight for the right of the country." Nearly four years ago, in an interview on Fox News, Trump hedged in almost the exact same way, telling Chris Wallace that he would “have to see.” But Trump’s obfuscation isn’t fooling anyone, Marc Elias writes. Read Marc’s latest here.

What We’re Doing

Currently, Louisiana is the only U.S. state without a legal congressional map. In an analysis published earlier this week, Democracy Docket’s Crystal Hill unpacks the legal arguments in the district court’s decision to strike down the maps for an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. Read more here.

On May 13, the Wisconsin Supreme Court will hear a case arguing that drop boxes should be reinstated in the battleground state. In a new video and podcast episode, Marc and Paige explain what’s going on in the lawsuit, what to look for in oral argument and the potential electoral impact of the court’s decision. Watch on YouTube and listen wherever you get your podcasts.