SEven before the first vote for the American congressional election was cast at a polling station, there were disputes over the counting of votes in key states. Republican candidates and organizations in several states want to have thousands of absentee ballots voided in order to secure an advantage in races that can be very close. In some cases, the lawsuits are aimed at technical details in the election procedure, in other cases at the right to vote. Many Republican candidates are urging their supporters to give preference to voting in person on Election Day. Democrats have traditionally been more inclined to cast their ballots beforehand.
One of the theaters of legal battles is the state of Pennsylvania, where the Senate majority could decide. Here, according to a decision by the Supreme Court, no ballots can be counted where the voter has failed to write a date on the envelope – even if it was received before the actual election day. The Republican National Committee sued.
Claim and Counterclaim
A day before the election, Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman responded with a countersuit. His spokesman called the Republicans’ actions an “assault on Americans’ democratic rights.” In Pennsylvania, where victory is traditionally razor-thin, every vote matters to candidates. The missing dates affect around 7,000 ballot papers in the state; there are more than 3,300 in the counties of Philadelphia and Allegheny alone. Many Democratic supporters have made efforts before Election Day to identify the voters concerned so that they can cast a valid vote. The Republicans had also tried to prevent this with a lawsuit, but had failed in court. Outgoing Pennsylvania Governor, Democrat Tom Wolf, said Sunday that no voter should be “disenfranchised” simply because they “made a small mistake” when filling out their ballot. Before Trump’s lie about election fraud, this procedure was never a problem.
In Michigan, Republican nominee for secretary of the interior Kristina Karamo failed Monday in a lawsuit over absentee ballots not cast in person with ID. The lawsuit would have affected Detroit alone, as the state’s democratic stronghold, and possibly tens of thousands of mostly black voters. However, according to the judge, the plaintiffs failed to present “any evidence”. In Wisconsin, on the other hand, the Republicans have obtained a court ruling according to which absentee ballots that show technical errors when filling out may not be subsequently completed or corrected. Michigan voting rights attorney Jeffrey Mandell wrote in The Washington Post, criticizing Republicans’ “concerted effort” to undermine mail-in voting and make it harder for people to vote that way.”
painful experience
The deep distrust of many Republican voters goes back to Donald Trump, who had warned months before the 2020 presidential election about fraud through absentee ballots and finally used this narrative to spread the lie about the “stolen election”. In 2020, the Republican Party had to painfully learn how much can still be postponed by postal votes counted later: Trump proclaimed his victory immediately after the election, but days later the postal votes made Joe Biden the new President of the United States. Trump used this to call out alleged voter fraud – a claim supported by half of the Republican candidates standing for election this Tuesday.
Democrats in all states have been reminding for days that it could be some time before the final result of the congressional elections this Tuesday is known. Not because something is not right, but because counting postal votes is a lengthy process. This is because the documents must first be checked for completeness and prepared for scanning – a procedure that several states only allow from election day. In Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, for example, election workers are only allowed to start preparing for the count on Tuesday evening.
After the election two years ago, Trump and his supporters failed with more than 60 lawsuits alleging voter fraud, many of which involved absentee ballots. Since then, however, the Republicans have been preparing to better legally challenge a potentially unwelcome election result. Since 2021, more than 34 stricter electoral laws have been enacted in predominantly Republican-governed states, making it more difficult for voters to access postal voting, among other things. If the Republicans in the states succeed in filling key positions for the election, such as that of governor or secretary of the interior, with “election deniers” in these congressional elections, the system would be much more vulnerable than it was in 2020.
