Judges are rushing to resolve the legal battle surrounding the 2024 elections

Judges are rushing to resolve a latest wave of time-sensitive battles over how Americans will vote in the November election, with US courts hearing an average of one new lawsuit per day this month.

At least 29 cases have been filed since Oct. 1, according to Bloomberg News’ analysis of court documents. Some disputes required immediate reversal, such as whether to extend voter registration deadlines in states hit by hurricanes. Other issues involved purging voter rolls, the locations of absentee ballot drop boxes and how local officials will count and certify results in the days after Nov. 5.

More than half of the cases filed in October were filed in the seven states where polls show the race for the White House is mostly tight between former presidents Donald Trump and vice president Kamala Harris. This follows the larger universe of lawsuits – nearly 200, according to Bloomberg analysis – filed since 2023 regarding voting and counting procedures in the upcoming general election, which also includes races for Congress and state and local offices.

Natural disasters

Hurricanes Helene and Milton devastated parts of the southeast in the US in late September and early October, just as voter registration periods were set to expire in several affected states. Voting rights groups and Democrats went to court to argue for an extension of those deadlines, with mixed results.

In South Carolina, election officials did not oppose a request from the state Democratic Party to extend the registration deadline. A judge granted the request the day after the lawsuit was filed.

“The Legislature did not intend that voters be excluded from exercising their constitutional right to vote because the state has been struck by a natural disaster,” the judge said. wrote.

But judges inside Georgia And Florida – where government officials opposed extending registration deadlines – refused requests from advocacy groups to intervene. In Georgia, a battleground in the presidential race, the… Republican National Committee joined the case to oppose changing the date.

Voter eligibility

The RNC filed lawsuits in North Carolina and Michigan, accusing officials in the swing states of improperly allowing out-of-state voters who had not been residents in the past to register to vote there. Republicans lost in the first round in both fallen. The judge in Michigan hit the lawsuit as an “eleventh attempt at disenfranchisement.” The RNC is appealing both decisions.

In Virginia the US Department of Justice and advocacy groups have filed a lawsuit over the state’s efforts to remove people suspected of foreign nationality from the voter rolls in the final weeks of the campaign. Virginia has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene after lower courts blocked the purge.

Voting locations

In Pennsylvania, voters were supported by the American Union for Civil Liberties one complained official in Luzerne County after announcing in mid-September that there would be no drop boxes for absentee ballots this year, citing security concerns. Days after the lawsuit was filed, the official agreed to deploy the boxes, ending the need for immediate legal action. But the official maintained her position that she was not legally obliged to do so, leaving open the possibility of future legal wrangles.

Elsewhere in the swing state, officials in Montgomery County facing a lawsuit for deploying a van to provide mobile election services, including registering people to vote. The Pennsylvania man who filed suit argued the county failed to provide adequate notice of where and when the van would be used in violation of state law. A judge has yet to make a ruling.

Counting ballots

Georgia’s Republican-majority election board faced multiple lawsuits over new rules it adopted in August and September that changed the way local officials would count ballots and certify results. Several of these cases were filed in early October, including one that led to a block order a requirement to count ballots by hand before passing them through electronic calculators.

In Virginia, there are dueling lawsuits in Waynesboro County over whether ballots should be counted by hand. Local election officials sued the state early this month, arguing for a hand count and announcing they would refuse to release the results. Voters, supported by a voting rights organization, indicted a few weeks laterasking a judge to declare that the election board must certify. A judge has not yet ruled.

Video and records

The final category of lawsuits this month concerns requests for information and documents related to the way these elections are being administered. Document requests typically don’t move quickly, but Republican-led attorneys general in Florida, Ohio and Texas have announced lawsuits against the US Department of Homeland Security seeking data that state officials say should check whether foreigners are registered to vote. Republicans have raised the possibility of noncitizens voting this cycle as a major issue, but research has shown that is rare. None of the issues will be resolved before Election Day.

To contact the reporter about this story:
Zoe Tillman in Washington at [email protected]

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Sarah Forden at [email protected]

Elisabeth Wasserman