Trump Administration Retools Its Election Legal Fight to Keep Disputes Alive After Election Day
In the closing days of the congressional campaign, the Trump administration and its Justice Department are filing lawsuits and opening investigations that could extend election disputes well beyond Tuesday — a strategy the Washington Post reports has failed in court so far, and that Monday's Supreme Court refusal in the California case continued.
The election lawsuits are no longer only about Election Day. In the closing days of a campaign for Congress where polls show his side losing, President Donald Trump and his Justice Department are filing lawsuits and opening investigations that could extend disputes well beyond Election Day, the Washington Post reports — an attempt, in the Post's account, to cast doubt on the midterm elections, discount some ballots and prevent the finalization of results, entering what the Post calls a frenetic new phase on the eve of the vote.
The shape of the strategy, as the Post reports it, points past Tuesday. The administration is trying to force California to set aside thousands of ballots — the push the Supreme Court refused to join on Monday, in the ruling this station filed this evening — and to get Alaska to hold off on certifying its results if a Democrat wins the state's Senate race. It has threatened to sue Washington state if it does not discount ballots from hundreds of voters, and has suggested it may try to do the same in other states. The litigation strategy has failed so far, the Post reports, but appears designed to give the Justice Department more time to contest results after the election.
Critics quoted by the Post describe a department turned from its traditional role of easing access to the ballot toward erecting last-minute hurdles that could prevent some people from voting. "A lot of what you're seeing is just a sort of a temper tantrum in the form of a lawsuit," said Sam Oliker-Friedland, a former frontline voting rights litigator at the Justice Department who now leads the Institute for Responsive Government. For Orlando voters, Tuesday's mechanics are unchanged — Florida's polls, its 7 p.m. close and its canvassing are untouched by any of these filings — but the Post's reporting sets the expectation for the week after: in several states, the counting may end before the fighting does.
