How legal fights brewing before Election Day could impact the presidential race

Legal fights have broken out in every critical battleground state in the weeks before Election Day, setting up dramatic court standoffs targeting thousands of votes that could decide who wins a razor-thin race in November.

State and national Republicans are facing off against their Democratic counterparts over rules and procedures that impact a host of voting mechanisms and blocs of voters.

Here’s how legal matters are shaking out in key swing states where former President Trump and Vice President Harris are nearly deadlocked in a tie, according to recent polls.

Arizona

Republicans’ noncitizens voting claims have been central in Arizona, where 218,000 people were found to be registered despite not providing proof of citizenship due to a computer glitch.

Whether those voters were still entitled to cast a ballot for president was never in dispute, but Arizona’s top court has ruled that election officials must allow people impacted to vote in state and local races, too.

The Republican National Committee has separately led a fight over the state’s Election Procedures Manual, contending the public was not given sufficient notice and an opportunity to comment before updates were implemented.

The RNC is appealing its case’s dismissal. But a separate challenge to the manual by the America First Policy Institute and other conservative groups has found more success.

The case remains ongoing, but an appeals court has temporarily halted restrictions on electioneering, photography and intimidating activity within 75 feet of polling places.

Georgia

The most contentious legal rows in Georgia have stemmed from several last-minute rules passed by its State Election Board, an unelected, Republican-controlled panel.

A state judge struck down seven of those rules, including one that allowed election workers to undertake a “reasonable inquiry” before certifying and another that would have required the completion of a hand-count verification on election night.

The judge deemed the rules “illegal, unconstitutional and void.” The RNC, which intervened in the case, asked the Georgia Supreme Court to quickly reverse the judge’s ruling.

But the state’s highest court declined to expedite the appeal, effectively ensuring no 11th-hour rule changes.

A different state judge both paused the hand-count rule from going into effect and affirmed that county election officials may not delay or decline to certify election results. The latter was appealed, but it’s unlikely to be resolved before Election Day.

Michigan

In Michigan, legal challenges have targeted overseas and absentee voters as well as voter roll maintenance, with little luck.

A federal judge recently threw out a RNC lawsuit that challenged how Michigan maintains its voter rolls, ruling that the RNC and two voters who joined the suit didn’t have standing to bring their case – and, even if they did, had no plausible claim.

In a different challenge, a state judge rejected another RNC claim that Michigan improperly accepted overseas ballots from people who never lived in its jurisdiction. The GOP appealed that ruling, but Michigan’s mid-level appeals court declined to expedite the process – sharply limiting the likelihood of any relief before Election Day.

Nevada

The legal battles in Nevada largely revolve around the state’s voter rolls and mail ballot procedures.

The RNC and Trump campaign sued the Democratic National Committee and Nevada’s Democratic secretary of state, alleging he has failed to purge thousands of noncitizens from Nevada’s voter rolls.

Based on a comparison of voter rolls and driver's license records, the lawsuit claims 6,136 noncitizens have active voter registrations and many voted in 2020.

State officials have cast the lawsuit as baseless, noting that the comparison doesn’t account for people recently becoming naturalized citizens.

“Deciding what voter information should be matched with what databases for what purposes is a complicated, technical problem to be resolved by legislatures and election officials - not by courts on the eve of a presidential election,” the DNC wrote this month in a motion to dismiss the lawsuit

North Carolina

Litigation in North Carolina has already thrown wrenches into the state’s election.

Absentee voting was delayed by two weeks due to a legal battle over whether to remove former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s name from the North Carolina ballots, which ended with the state’s highest court siding with Kennedy and removing his name.

On Monday, a federal appeals court will hear a challenge to 225,000 voter registrations in the state brought by state and national Republicans. The DNC and North Carolina State Board of Elections say the lawsuit violates the National Voter Registration Act, which bars purging voter rolls within 90 days before a federal election.

Pennsylvania

In Pennsylvania, a state viewed as a must-win by both campaigns, much pre-election litigation has revolved around mail ballots.

More than 1.2 million mail ballots have been returned and an additional 700,000 voters have requested mail ballots as of Friday, according to the Pennsylvania Department of State. Those figures are expected to grow, as voters have until Tuesday to make such requests.

Last month, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that mail ballots with improper dates cannot be counted, settling a key legal dispute ahead of Election Day.

But this past week, the court ruled 4-3 that voters whose mail ballots are rejected for technical reasons must be given an opportunity to cast a provisional ballot at their polling place and have it counted.

The RNC has indicated it will ask the nation’s highest court to put that ruling on pause.

Other legal fights remain unresolved.

The state’s high court has yet to rule on whether counties must provide voters with notice when their mail ballot is rejected for over technical errors. The court took up the case after voters and voting rights groups sued over not being notified of mail ballot errors in the state’s primary last spring.

Also, six Republican congressmen have challenged overseas ballots. Their lawsuit claims the state is not taking proper verification steps — a notion the state rejects — and could create an avenue for fraud.

A federal judge held a hearing on their request for an injunction on Oct. 18 but has not yet ruled.

Wisconsin

Legal claims in Wisconsin center on voter rolls and voting access.

A disability rights group challenged the state’s absentee system, contending that the current rules – which don’t allow for those ballots to be completed electronically except for overseas voters – limit elderly and disabled voters’ ability to vote privately.

Though a Wisconsin judge in June ordered the state election commission to facilitate access to electronically delivered absentee ballots, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals put that order on pause while state Republicans appeal.

The disability rights group in September asked the state’s top court to bypass the mid-level appeals court to decide the matter more quickly, but a decision is still pending – meaning the system could still change before Election Day.

Several pending lawsuits also pose challenges to the state’s voter roll procedures, and the Justice Department has sued two Wisconsin towns, Thornapple and Lawrence, over their decision to ban electronic voting machines in federal elections.