Ongoing GOP Fuckery

Republicans filed record number of anti-voting lawsuits in 2022 – report

Efforts challenging election results and attacking voting rights peaked last year, but courts ruled against the majority of them

The Republican party filed a record number of anti-voting lawsuits in 2022, a sign it is shifting the battle over voting access and election administration to courtrooms as well as state legislatures.

Last year, Republican party groups filed 23 democracy-related lawsuits, according to a new report by Democracy Docket, a progressive media platform that tracks voting litigation. The lawsuits included efforts to challenge election results, attacks on mail-in voting and attempts to undermine the administration of elections. The Democratic party, the report found, filed only six voting lawsuits in 2022 and all sought to protect or expand the right to vote.

The almost two dozen lawsuits filed by the GOP is an increase from 20 in 2020, the year of the presidential election in which Donald Trump’s loss was contested in courts for months. There were no new lawsuits by the Republican party in 2021, when there was no major election.

“Evidently, the GOP establishment is becoming more litigious than ever and is turning to courts to achieve its anti-voting and anti-democracy ends,” the report says.

A total of 175 voting lawsuits were filed in 2022, according to the report, up from 150 in 2020. Of the 175 lawsuits, 93 were characterized as anti-voting, and the Republican party (which the report said it defined as the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee, or state or county Republican parties) was responsible for nearly 25% of them.

In addition to the lawsuits filed by the party itself, 25 lawsuits were filed by GOP candidates without the official backing of their party. Many of these candidates were election deniers, like Mark Finchem in Arizona who challenged the results of the secretary of state race he lost in November.

A judge threw out Finchem’s lawsuit in December, finding he didn’t present evidence of election misconduct.

Many of the anti-voting lawsuits were based on what Democracy Docket called “fringe” theories. The parties that filed them often promoted the ”big lie” or relied on conspiracy theories to challenge election results or limit voting opportunities. Several lawsuits continued to challenge the results of the 2020 election two years later, including one lawsuit filed in Michigan in September by a group of Republicans seeking to decertify the election 648 days after it was certified.

Though the lawsuits were spread across the US, three battleground states with prominent election deniers on the ballot – Arizona, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – saw the most new lawsuits filed last year.

The report also tracked consequential orders in each of the voting-related lawsuits in 2022 and found that a majority of them were wins for voting rights. Of 175 consequential orders, 116 were victories for voters, 35 were losses for voters and 27 were neutral decisions.

“In 2022, democracy won in the courtroom,” the report concluded.

Nonetheless, the litigation is unlikely to slow down in the next two years. The Republican party appealed nearly a third of the final orders that benefited voters last year, and an upcoming presidential election means there will no doubt be a new round of litigation ahead of 2024.