A pro-Trump group that is challenging voter registration lists and filing lawsuits in several battleground states is already planning a lawsuit over this year’s election results, one of the group’s founders told USA TODAY.
“We feel compelled to file to protect this beautiful country,” said Marley Hornig, who co-founded United Sovereign Americans in 2023. “We have already made mistakes in the process. The signs and numbers are coming in.”
The organization, which describes itself as nonpartisan, is regularly represented by Bruce Castor, former President Donald Trump’s lawyer during his impeachment trial over the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Lawsuits from both the group and Republican organizations suggest widespread voter fraud, but provide no evidence of it.
These claims reinforce former President Donald Trump’s false story that he did not lose the 2020 election, and critics say he is likely to commit similar election theft if he loses again. I am concerned that this is a sign that he will make a statement. Numerous tallies and audits have determined that President Joe Biden won the last presidential election. Nearly all of the more than 60 lawsuits filed by Trump allies after the election failed.
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“Those who seek to interfere with elections want to plant a fictional narrative that there is reason to be upset about the electoral process,” said Justin Levitt, a Loyola Marymount law professor who studies election issues. No,” he told USA TODAY.
Hornig said the group aims to conduct an external audit of the 2024 election. A lawsuit would have to be filed before the results could be certified, but that would likely be after the state releases the results or the media releases them, she said. The group could file a lawsuit sooner, but is debating internally whether a court would rule it premature to litigate before the outcome.
“For some reason they keep saying they did a great job,” she said, referring to past election audits. “But all other creative industries have to be audited by external auditors so they can find out what really happened.”
A lawsuit has already been filed
Already this year, United Sovereign Americans has sued officials in nine different states, alleging widespread errors in voter registration data that could indicate fraud.
For example, in the Pennsylvania lawsuit, the group said there were nearly 3.2 million violations out of about 8.8 total registrations, “casting doubt” on the trustworthiness and trustworthiness of the state’s 2022 interim results. claims. Examples of the alleged errors include “illogical voter histories” and “suspicious” registrant addresses, which the group said violate two federal laws: the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act. He claims to do so.
Lawyers for the Pennsylvania Secretary of State said the group’s questions about dates on documents were “factually baseless and irrelevant” under the National Voter Registration Act, which is “intended as a shield to protect voting rights.” “and not as a sword to protect the right to vote.” Stick it out. ”
Lawyers also said the Help America Vote Act is about voting machine operating standards, not voter registration.
“Every state has just said these were clerical errors,” Hornig told USA TODAY.
Sowing seeds of doubt in the US election?
The United Sovereign Americans lawsuit fits into a broader trend of legal challenges to state voter rolls, which also includes several lawsuits from the Republican National Committee and state Republican parties.
lawsuit, Some of them were rejected, This result occurred despite the lack of evidence of widespread voter fraud.
An Associated Press investigation of all possible incidents of voter fraud in six battleground states contested by Trump in 2020 (Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) found that Of the 25.5 million votes cast, fewer than 475 cases of fraud were discovered. The incident did not affect the outcome, with Biden winning by more than 10,000 votes in each state and winning all six states by a total of 311,257 votes.
President Trump’s own attorney general, Bill Barr, said in December 2020 that the Justice Department had found no evidence of wrongdoing that would change the outcome.
A Brennan Center for Justice study of the 2016 election found that in 42 jurisdictions representing 23.5 million votes cast in the 2016 election, only 30 cases were referred for further investigation or prosecution for suspected non-referendum voting. It was not revealed.
For some, the failure of legal efforts and the lack of evidence of actual widespread fraud begs the question of why lawsuits are brought in the first place, especially in the run-up to elections. It is occurring.
“The foregone conclusion is that this is the setup for claiming the election was stolen,” said the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, a nonprofit that works with Republican and Democratic election officials to strengthen confidence in elections. , David Becker told USA TODAY. .
“There is a significant risk that the continued noise will inadvertently lie and convince a significant portion of the American people that they should not believe in their election,” Levitt said.
Hornig said if her group’s lawsuit casts the election in question, it’s because there are fundamental problems with the system, even though the group hasn’t won in court so far. Most of the company’s lawsuits were filed in August or September. A lawsuit filed in March against Maryland officials was dismissed in May and is currently under appeal.
What will post-election litigation look like?
Hornig said the group’s pre-election concerns led to a desire to sue for an audit that state officials did not conduct.
“We know that none of these systems have been repaired. Our concerns were ignored,” Hornig said. “Therefore, there is no clear reason to trust this process any more than we did previously.”
Still, some of the issues the group raises may look different from previous lawsuits.
United Sovereign Americans sued Texas officials in late August, alleging widespread errors in voter registration data, as well as Pennsylvania.
But in a phone call with USA TODAY, Hornig raised an entirely different suspicion against the state, claiming that early votes in Texas were already being counted on “machines that failed certification tests.” He said Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson, appointed by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, “wrote a waiver” to allow the use of the malfunctioning machine.
That’s not true, Nelson’s spokeswoman Alicia Phillips Pierce told USA TODAY.
“All machines used in Texas meet certification requirements. No exemptions have been issued,” Pearce said in an email.
The lawsuit may depend on the outcome.
Hornig said he plans to sue even if Trump wins the state.
“This is not about one candidate. There are 435 parliamentary seats up for re-election or new elections in the coming weeks,” Hornig said.
However, he declined to say whether he would file a lawsuit regardless of the election results.
“It depends on our resources, and we will do everything in our power to make the election as secure as possible for the American people,” Hornig said.
In addition to Pennsylvania, Texas and Maryland, United Sovereign Americans has filed lawsuits this year challenging voter rolls in Georgia, Michigan, Colorado, North Carolina, Florida and Ohio.
“No one needs to drink Maricopa Mardi Gras anymore.”
After the 2020 election, Trump spread misinformation about election results in Phoenix’s Maricopa County, including falsely claiming that election-related databases had been deleted. A months-long Republican-backed audit confirmed President Joe Biden won the county.
Still, the post-election chaos in the county and other parts of the country has spurred unprecedented state election security efforts, including bulletproof glass, surveillance cameras, panic buttons and de-escalation training for election workers. There is.
United Sovereign Americans has no intention of causing chaos in the aftermath of this year’s election, Hornig said.
“Nobody needs to have another Maricopa Mardi Gras, as I like to call it,” Hornig told USA TODAY.
But it could require voters to verify their identity or correct clerical errors before their votes are counted.
“We flag anything that looks like trash. And if those people want to vote, that’s fine. They vote provisionally. They come and show their ID. , I said, ‘Yes, I’m really here, I’m here…’ My address,” she said.
