Courts foiling GOP's late push for election changes [View all]

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Source: Axios

9 hours ago


Judges in some of the nation's most important election battlegrounds have rejected a string of last-minute efforts by conservative and Trump-aligned groups to impose new voting rules ahead of Election Day.

Why it matters: Even as courts have shot down several of these challenges, election law experts are warning that the rejections could be used to promote conspiracy theories and misinformation about what polls suggest will be a very close presidential election.

The challenges have come as former President Trump and his allies have built a roster of excuses for claiming fraud and rejecting the results of the 2024 election if he loses — much as he did in 2020.

Driving the news: In Georgia, a Trump-aligned majority of the state's election board passed a flurry of rules last month that would have changed how the election would be run in the state — including a measure to require poll workers to hand-count millions of ballots.

Fulton County judges overturned that rule and others, including one that would have allowed Georgia county election officials to delay certifying election results merely by citing suspicions of fraud.

Republicans have appealed the decisions, which Republican National Committee chair Michael Whatley called "the very worst of judicial activism."

In Arizona, a federal judge blocked an effort that would have required Arizona's 15 counties to check the citizenship of every federal election-only voter, which amounts to about 42,000 in the state.

A federal judge ruled this month that the challenge from conservative advocacy group Strong Communities Foundation of Arizona lacked standing and was filed too close to Election Day.

Read more: https://www.axios.com/2024/10/21/courts-republicans-late-election-changes