Trump-aligned group already planning lawsuits over election results

A Trump-aligned group that has filed lawsuits in several swing states challenging voter registration lists is already planning to sue for this year’s election resultsone of the group’s founders told USA TODAY.

“We feel compelled to file in defense of this beautiful country,” said Marly Hornik, co-founder of United Sovereign Americans in 2023. “We already have signs and numbers of errors within the process.”

The organization, which describes itself as nonpartisan, is regularly represented by Bruce Castorlawyer of former president donald trump in your political trial for him January 6 attack on the Capitol.

Demands from both the group and republican organizations suggest widespread voter fraud could be occurring – without providing evidence that it is.

Affirmations feed the false narrative of the former president donald trump that he did not lose the 2020 election, which critics fear will be a precursor to accusations of similar electoral theft if he loses again. Numerous recounts and audits demonstrated President joe biden won the last presidential election. Almost all of the more than 60 lawsuits Trump’s allies failed after that election.

“People seeking to disrupt the election want to plant the fictitious narrative that there are reasons to be scared about the process. There aren’t,” Justin Levitt, a Loyola Marymount law professor who researches election issues, told USA TODAY.

Hornik said the group would seek to conduct outside audits of the 2024 election. Lawsuits would need to be filed before the results are certified, but likely only after a state has announced the results or the media has announced the results, said. The group could file a lawsuit sooner, but is internally debating whether a court would say a pre-outcome lawsuit is premature.

“For some reason, they keep saying they did a great job,” he said, referring to past election audits. “But all other developing industries have to be audited by outside auditors. That’s how you really find out what happened.”

Lawsuits already filed

United Sovereign Americans has already sued officials in nine different states this year, alleging widespread errors in voter registration data that it says could indicate fraud.

In a Pennsylvania lawsuit, for example, the group alleges There are nearly 3.2 million violations out of nearly 8.8 total records, which “calls into question” the reliability and credibility of the state’s 2022 interim results. Examples of the alleged errors include “illogical voter history” or “questionable” registrant addresses that the group says violate two federal laws, the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act.

Pennsylvania Clerk’s Attorneys responded that the group’s questions about the dates on the documents are “groundless and irrelevant” under the National Voter Registration Act, which “‘is intended as a shield to protect the right to vote, not as a sword to pierce it.’ “.

The lawyers also said the Help America Vote Act refers to standards for operating voting machines, not voter registration.

“All the states have just told us that these are administrative errors,” Hornik told USA TODAY.

Sowing doubts about the US elections?

The United Sovereign Americans’ lawsuits fit into a broader trend of legal challenges to state voter rolls, which also includes several lawsuits from the Republican National Committee and state Republican parties.

the lawsuits, several of which have state dismissed, have occurred despite there being no evidence of actual widespread electoral fraud.

a review by the AP of every possible case of voter fraud in the six swing states Trump contested in 2020 (Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) they found fewer than 475 cases out of 25.5 million votes cast for president. The cases had no impact on the results: Biden won each state by more than 10,000 votes and all six by a combined total of 311,257 votes.

Trump’s own attorney general, Bill Barr, said in December 2020 that the The Justice Department had not discovered evidence of fraud that would change the results.

A Brennan Center for Justice study of the 2016 election discovered only 30 referrals of suspected noncitizen voters for further investigation or prosecution in 42 jurisdictions that accounted for 23.5 million of the votes in that election.

For some, the failed legal effort and lack of evidence of actual widespread fraud raises the question of why lawsuits are being filed, and especially – in many cases – so close to the election.

“The natural conclusion is to set the stage to claim that an election was stolen,” David Becker, executive director of the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation and Research, which works with Republican and Democratic election officials to strengthen the confidence in the elections. .

“There is a great risk that continued noise will teach a sizable portion of the American public (incorrectly lie to them and convince them) that they should not have faith in their elections,” Levitt said.

Hornik said that if his organization’s lawsuits cast doubt on the election, it is because of underlying problems in the systems, even if the group has so far failed to win in court. Most of their lawsuits were filed in August or September. A lawsuit filed in March against Maryland officials was fired in may and it is on appeal.

What would the post-election demands be like?

Hornik said the group’s concerns before the election have informed its desire to sue over audits that are not conducted by state officials.

“We know that none of these systems were repaired. Our concerns were dismissed,” Hornik said. “So there’s no clear reason to have more faith in the process than before.”

Still, some of the issues you raise may seem different from your previous demands.

United Sovereign Americans sued Texas state officials in late August, arguing – as happened in Pennsylvania – that there are widespread errors in voter registration data.

But in his phone call with USA TODAY, Hornik raised an entirely different alleged issue with the state, claiming that early votes in Texas are already being counted “on machines that didn’t pass their certification test.” He said Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson, appointed by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, “wrote a waiver” allowing the use of defective machines.

That’s not true, Nelson spokeswoman Alicia Phillips Pierce told USA TODAY.

“All machines used in Texas meet certification requirements. No exemptions have been issued,” Pierce said in an email.

Lawsuits could depend on the outcome

Hornik said he would still file lawsuits if Trump won a state.

“This is not about one candidate. There are 435 congressional seats up for grabs for re-election or a new election in a few weeks,” Hornik said.

However, he declined to say whether the lawsuits would be filed regardless of the election outcome.

“That really depends on our resources, and we’re going to do everything we can to secure as many elections as possible for the American people,” Hornik said.

In addition to Pennsylvania, Texas and Maryland, United Sovereign Americans have filed lawsuits this year to challenge voter rolls in Georgia, Michigan, Colorado, North Carolina, Florida and Ohio.

‘No one needs to have another Maricopa Mardi Gras’

After the 2020 election, Trump spread misinformation about the election results in Phoenix’s Maricopa County, including Falsely claiming that an election-related database had been deleted.. A Republican-backed audit that took months Confirmed President Joe Biden won the county..

Still, the chaos that followed the election in that county and elsewhere in the country has spurred unprecedented state efforts on election security, including bulletproof glass, security cameras, panic buttonsand stress-reduction training for poll workers.

United Sovereign Americans is not looking to sow chaos after this year’s election, Hornik said.

“No one needs to have another Maricopa Mardi Gras, as I like to call it,” Hornik told USA TODAY.

But you can try to have voters come to verify their identity or correct a clerical error before their votes can be counted.

“All the things that look like garbage are flagged. And if those people want to vote, that’s fine. They vote provisionally. They come in, show an ID and say, ‘Yes, I’m really here, here is… my address,'” he said.