Democrats are increasingly concerned that Republicans are preparing the ground for Trump’s defeat with lawsuits

WASHINGTON — As Republicans launch a barrage of legal battles in swing states ahead of November’s election, Kamala Harris and her Democratic allies suspect that their real goal is to sow doubt about the outcome if Donald Trump loses the election.

In Georgia, the Republican-controlled state election board is trying to give local officials the power to decide for themselves whether something unexpected happened during the vote, potentially slowing down the process of determining the winner.

In Michigan, Republicans are suing the city of Detroit for not hiring enough Republican poll workers, and in North Carolina they claim the state’s voter rolls could potentially allow non-citizens to vote.

At first glance, all of these claims look different. But the Harris team says they are all linked by a pattern: Trump and his Republican allies want to create confusion about the outcome should he lose. Democrats have filed briefs in at least one case expressing concerns about what they believe is the true purpose of the Republicans’ lawsuit.

A defeated Trump could use the lawsuits to revive his baseless claim that the election procedures were rigged in a way that should invalidate the result, Harris campaign officials say. Trump and his allies filed dozens of unsuccessful lawsuits after the 2020 election, in a barrage of false claims of voter fraud that culminated in a mob storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s victory.

“We believe that every lawsuit they have filed is a building block for the argument they will make in November to claim the election was rigged,” said a representative of Harris’ campaign, who asked not to be identified. “That is basically our view of what their litigation is about. That is why we are prepared, we will win in court and we will make sure that this election is free and fair.”

The Trump campaign referred its questions to the Republican National Committee.

An RNC spokeswoman, Claire Zunk, said in a prepared statement: “President Trump’s election integrity efforts are aimed at protecting every legal vote, containing threats to the electoral process and securing the election. As Democrats continue their election tampering against President Trump and the American people, our operation is standing up to their plans and preparing for November.”

With few exceptions in American politics, the two-month break between election day and Inauguration Day is usually quiet. That was not the case in 2020, when Trump was working to overturn the outcome and stay in office.

He still faces charges in federal court for this hopeless endeavor. Special Counsel Jack Smith has filed charges against him for attempting to defraud the American public and disadvantage voters in several states. However, the trial has been postponed and is unlikely to take place before the election. Trump has denied any wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty.

Both sides are bracing for a contested period after the election. Chris LaCivita, Trump’s co-campaign manager, hinted at a Politico event this summer that the Democrats could try to overturn the result if Trump wins: “It’s not over until he puts his hand on the Bible and takes the oath of office. It’s not over until then. It’s not over on election day. It’s over on inauguration day, because I don’t trust anyone with anything.”

The Democrats began preparing years ago. Their lawyers had written briefs in which they expected that Republican officeholders could, for example, refuse to certify election results, said a second employee of Harris’ campaign team.

“No Democratic campaign has been as well prepared as it is today, because we knew this was coming,” the official said. “It is crucial that there are people in the states who know the laws and the players and who have lived through 2020, seen what happened there and learned from it.”

Among other legal challenges, Republicans challenged Arizona’s election process manual and Nevada’s law that allows mail-in ballots to be counted after Election Day as long as they were postmarked beforehand.

Ground zero could be Georgia, a state that Biden narrowly won in 2020 and that Harris is aggressively trying to hold. Trump is facing criminal charges in Georgia for his efforts to overturn his loss in the state four years ago. He has pleaded not guilty.

This year, the issue is whether Georgia’s county election commissions can exercise discretion in certifying election results. The Republican-controlled Georgia Election Commission voted 3-2 last month to expand the powers of local officials. They can now certify results only after they have conducted a “reasonable investigation” into their accuracy. There was no definition of what a “reasonable investigation” entails.

Trump praised the three Republicans who voted for the rules, calling them “pit bulls” for their honesty.

But Democrats warn that the new rules could disrupt Georgia’s strict timeline for certifying elections. Moreover, local election boards have never had these powers and are only meant to perform the simple task of tallying up vote totals, Democrats argue. If someone claims there was fraud in an election, the courts are the right place to test that claim, they add.

“If someone believes there is a reason to throw out ballots, that is a decision that is made by the courts,” Sara Tindall Ghazal, the only Democrat on the Georgia State Board of Elections, said in an interview. “That is not a decision made by a partisan group of civilians on the election boards, many of whom have no background in the matter other than their partisan political connections.”

Justin Levitt, a professor of election law at Loyola Law School and a former Biden White House official specializing in democracy and election law, said the role of a county election board amounts to simple addition.

“It’s about saying 1 + 1 equals 2. It’s not about saying ‘1 + 1 equals 2. I don’t know if there are bamboo fibers in the ballots.’ That’s not what they [local election boards] are there,” he said, referring to a conspiracy theory about fraudulent ballots from Asia that made the rounds in 2020.

The Democratic National Committee sued the board last week to prevent the implementation of the new procedures.

In its motion, the committee argued that the new rule would “introduce significant uncertainty into the post-election process” and “would create chaos by introducing new processes that conflict with existing legal obligations.”

Both the Harris and Trump campaigns are using a lot of legal muscle to support the election and its aftermath. A memo released by the RNC in February said the committee was involved in 78 lawsuits in 23 states.

“If Democrats decide to continue their attacks on election security through Election Day, we will be prepared to take legal action and ensure that the election is fair, transparent, legal and accurate,” Zunk said.

The Harris campaign says it has hired hundreds of lawyers across the country to protect her legal interests. Leading the team’s election legal protection efforts is Dana Remus, Biden’s former White House counsel.

The campaign is also receiving outside help. Jim Messina, who ran Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, has formed a political action committee that can raise unlimited amounts of money and will also help with the court effort. Norm Eisen, special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee for Trump’s first impeachment trial, is an outside adviser to the group.

One casualty of disputed election results is the public’s trust in the system, election experts warn. Voters will feel that democracy is broken and may react by refusing to vote or by lashing out in anger.

In both his victory and his defeat, Trump has raised doubts about the trustworthiness of the US elections.

When he won in 2016, he baselessly claimed that he lost the majority of the vote only because millions of people voted illegally for his opponent, Hillary Clinton. And when he lost in 2020, he claimed the election was “rigged” in Biden’s favor.

Although he lost California this year by a margin of more than five million votes, Trump recently said he would win the state if Jesus Christ, or alternatively an honest mortal, were counting the votes.

“Trump said if it hadn’t been for the election fraud, he would have won California. That’s like me saying if it hadn’t been for the election fraud, I would be a supermodel,” Messina said.

In the years since Trump falsely claimed voter fraud, the partisan divide over election integrity has deepened. A poll conducted last year found that only 22 percent of Republicans were very confident that votes would be counted correctly in the 2024 presidential election, compared with 71 percent of Democrats.

“There are already citizens who are 100 percent convinced that there is no possibility of free and fair elections in Georgia,” Ghazal said.

Many of Trump’s supporters who stormed the Capitol on January 6 did so under the false belief that the 2020 election had been stolen from him. The first rioter to enter the building, Michael Sparks, told the judge at a hearing last week that he believes “to this day” that the election was stolen from Trump. Sparks was sentenced to more than four years in prison.

Some election experts fear that Trump’s voters could resort to violence again if he loses in November.

“I’m concerned about the potential for chaos,” Levitt said. “It’s natural for people who are told the election was rigged to take to the streets if they believe they have no power to peacefully influence the outcome.”