'Voting wars': Former White House counsel details RNC’s 'new legal attack' on election rules

Elections lawyer and Democracy Docker publisher Marc Elias has been warning that if Donald Trump loses the 2024 presidential election, his MAGA allies in key swing states have a plan to fight the election results — including some MAGA Republicans who now sit on the Georgia Board of Elections. Caputo, however, isn't the only legal expert who is sounding the alarm.

In an article published by The Atlantic on August 21, New York University law professor Bob Bauer — who served as White House counsel to former President Barack Obama — warns that Trump's allies are hoping to use the U.S. Supreme Court in their efforts to subvert traditional election rules.

"Only months before November’s elections, the Republican National Committee has launched a new legal attack on the rules that govern federal elections," Bauer explains. "Supported by 24 states, the RNC is seeking, on an emergency basis, a Supreme Court ruling that the United States Congress lacks the constitutional authority to regulate presidential elections — congressional elections, yes, but not elections held to select presidents. The petitioners' immediate goal is to allow the state of Arizona to impose a 'proof of citizenship' requirement as a condition of a person’s right to vote for president."

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Bauer notes that he has been advising Democratic organizers on this lawsuit and letting them know what is at stake.

"If (Republicans) are to succeed, the Court will have to suddenly, with mere weeks left before people start voting, abandon or explain away a decision it rendered in 2013 — that Congress has the power to establish rules for voter registration in presidential elections," according to Bauer. "But even if the suit fails, it risks achieving some success in sowing doubt about the integrity of elections, highlighting claims of illegal voting by immigrants, and laying a foundation for post-election allegations of fraud and related legal challenges."

Bauer points out that the lawsuit challenges the National Voter Registration Act of 1993.

"The 'voting wars,' as the legal scholar Richard L. Hasen has termed the legal battles over elections, appear certain to rage on," Bauer writes. "They have intensified under the pressures of election denialism and the grievances of a former president over an election he will not concede he lost. Now, the Supreme Court will have to decide, whatever course this conflict takes in the years ahead, whether it will entertain novel and potentially destabilizing legal claims as election administrators complete their preparations for the fall, and the voting begins."

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Bob Bauer's full article for The Atlantic is available at this link (subscription required).