Lawyers gear up for 'nasty legal battle' if Trump loses election: report

26 August 2024

A variety of election law experts, from Democracy Docket founder Marc Elias to UCLA law professor Rick L. Hasen, have been warning that if Donald Trump loses the 2024 presidential election to Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, he is certain to fight the election results.

In an article published on August 26, Business Insider's Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert details the post-election fight that Democratic and GOP lawyers are gearing up for.

"This year's election is shaping up to be decided in court, rather than the ballot box, legal experts told Business Insider, and both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are preparing for a nasty legal battle to duke it out," Tangalakis-Lippert explains. "Republican groups, both formally and informally aligned with Trump, are preparing to challenge the outcome of the election in multiple battleground states."

Tangalakis-Lippert describes the actions that that MAGA Republicans have been taking in key swing states like Georgia and Arizona.

"The Guardian reported that Trump allies in Georgia have adopted new rules for the state's election board, allowing members to potentially delay certification of the election over undefined inquiries into ballot discrepancies," the Business Insider reporter notes. "In Arizona, Michigan, and Nevada, the GOP has pushed for voter rolls to be purged despite established federal limits on doing so in the months before the election, per The Washington Post."

Tangalakis-Lippert adds, "Republicans in Nevada also filed a suit to prevent mail-in ballots from being counted if they're received after Election Day, though the legal rationale behind the suit has been dismissed repeatedly by courts in the past, the outlet noted."

Syracuse University law professor David Driesen warns that post-election battles could be especially intense in swing states.

Driesen told Business Insider, "You now have, in the swing states of Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, about 70 election deniers and commissions that are supposed to count the electoral votes, and already there have been about 20 cases where officials in recent elections have refused or delayed certification of results. So what Trump is going to do is claim some kind of fraud and then try to get the officials who believe him to delay or prevent certification on election results…. Or, at least, in a lot of litigation chaos, it could end up putting things in the House of Representatives or to the Supreme Court — which is in Trump's pocket."

Driesen added, "I think (that) the strategy is to try to prevent certification of Harris victories in the swing states where there are substantial numbers of election-law deniers. And sometimes, they may also try to have state legislatures certify alternative slates of electors, using the inability to certify as an approach."

Read Business Insider's full report at this link (subscription required).

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