In fact, in a change from the past, it was the GOP that showed the sharpest increase in its litigation docket. At several key junctures during the campaign, Trump made clear that voter suppression was his top priority for the party’s spending. He even replaced the Republican National Committee chair in part because he found her insufficiently committed to filing anti-voting litigation.
As the new report notes: “After filing only six lawsuits in 2020, the RNC filed 24 lawsuits in 2024 and engaged in 18% of all lawsuits this cycle. The Trump campaign itself filed five lawsuits.” When you look at the broader GOP, the numbers are even more stark. More than half of all 158 anti-voting lawsuits filed this cycle were brought by some part of the Republican Party.
By contrast, the Democratic Party accounted for only 17% of the pro-voting docket, with progressive nonprofits and groups accounting for nearly 70% of the total caseload. The DNC filed nine cases while the presidential campaigns of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris filed none.
The good news is that despite the sharp increase in litigation, pro-voting forces continued to win, notching three times as many victories as losses with most of those victories coming in the presidential battleground states.
So, what do we make of this?
First, we should be pleased that, once again, the courts largely rejected GOP attacks on our election systems. As imperfect as they are, at a time when Republics control the presidency and both chambers of Congress, the courts will remain the most powerful tool to prevent Trump from undermining our democracy and rule of law.
Second, we need to recognize that litigation is now a part of the process of our elections. We are not going back to the days where the courts were spectators in the electoral process. Both sides have learned that the rules of voting matter — to voters and, in some instances, to outcomes. It is difficult to look at the results of the U.S. Senate race in Pennsylvania and the ongoing litigation in the North Carolina state Supreme Court race and draw any other conclusion.
Third, both political parties and nonprofits have a role to play in protecting voting rights. Republicans came into 2024 with a clear plan to use litigation to reinforce Donald Trump’s false claims and to change the rules to benefit his campaign. A constellation of right-wing groups followed suit. The Democratic Party took a different approach. The result was that pro-voting non-party groups and organizations were forced to bear an enormous load of cases to ensure a free and fair election.