GOP’s aggressive legal election strategy has more than 130 cases

This election cycle — in which a former president who tried to overturn his 2020 loss is topping the Republican ticket — has featured an unprecedented amount of pre-election litigation, with the GOP touting that it’s been involved in 130 cases.

This election cycle — in which a former president who tried to overturn his 2020 loss is topping the Republican ticket — has featured an unprecedented amount of pre-election litigation, with the GOP touting that it’s been involved in 130 cases. The GOP’s aggressive approach in court goes hand in hand with former President Donald Trump’s strategy of using the courts to preemptively cast doubt on the 2024 results. Republicans counter any criticism by saying that they’re focused on making sure the rules are clear and that election officials are on notice that they must follow the law. Democrats have rushed to court as well — to defend the election policies under GOP attack and to fend off moves they say would kick eligible Americans off the voter rolls. Yet legally, the onslaught of Republican-led lawsuits has done little to change the status quo around voting and election administration, according to Leah Tulin, an election law expert at the liberal-leaning Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s law school. “If we measure success in terms of favorable results or winning lawsuits, the effort has been basically a total failure,” Tulin said. “There are still a lot of those cases pending, but they haven’t really moved, and we don’t expect most of them to move, or certainly to have favorable results in them before the election.” A spokesperson for the Republican National Committee defended the GOP’s record in court, telling CNN that Republicans’ “unprecedented election integrity operation is committed to defending the law and protecting every legal vote.”