RNC has launched 73 election lawsuits in 20 states: ‘Most litigious’ election cycle

The Republican National Committee (RNC), has filed 73 lawsuits regarding election integrity in 20 states in the 2022 midterm elections cycle. This is an increase in 2020 and has secured GOP victories this year in battleground states.

The legal challenges range from the rights to monitor the counting of votes, to illegally counting absentee ballots that have been mismarked.

According to an RNC spokesperson, this aggressive legal approach is part of Ronna McDaniel’s vision to make this cycle the RNC’s most litigious. This strategy involves offense-minded lawsuits such as suing Democratic secretaries and challenging Democrat friendly election laws. Defensive actions include intervening in lawsuits brought in Republican states by the Biden administration.

This strategy is two years after a cycle in which some Republicans wanted to make a greater effort to control state election activities. It also comes two years after a presidential election result that led to former President Trump filing dozens of lawsuits. One group of Republicans welcomed the decision to take aggressive legal measures to ensure that states don’t have the right to extend their election rules beyond those in state law.

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Fox News Digital’s Michael Bars, Executive Director of the Election Transparency Initiative said that “after the failures of the last election” a proactive and preventive legal strategy was essential to ensure the integrity of the next election. He said that “significant steps” had been taken over the past two years to restore voters’ faith in secure and fair elections.

According to Gates McGavick, spokesperson for the RNC, these lawsuits result from a multimillion-dollar investment in building an election integrity operations infrastructure that draws upon its legal, political and data resources.

The RNC filed lawsuits in New York and Vermont to overturn voting laws that would have allowed non-U.S. citizens the right to vote. It successfully challenged a law that would have added at most 900,000 non-citizens onto the voter rolls in New York State Supreme Court.

The RNC sued Pennsylvania on Oct. 16 after it decided to ignore state law and a Supreme Court decision by saying that it will count undated absentee votes.

The RNC also won two legal challenges this month in an attempt to ensure that poll workers are equally represented by both political parties. This forced Arizona and Nevada to produce data on poll-worker numbers.

The RNC successfully challenged Jocelyn Benson (Michigan’s Democratic secretary of state), who imposed illegal restrictions upon poll challengers. These are people appointed to challenge voter eligibility.

McDaniel stated in a statement that Jocelyn Benson had not only ignored Michigan’s election law when she issued this guidance but also violated the rights to political parties and poll challengers in order to ensure transparency and promote trust in Michigan’s elections.

McGavick stated to Fox News Digital that with the November midterms approaching, the party’s infrastructure puts it in a position where it can fight any legal battles that might arise from close races. McGavick said that the RNC’s aggressive pre-election litigation efforts have helped ensure the rules are clear in many states.