2024 US elections: We can’t say we weren’t warned
“If everything’s honest, I’d gladly accept the results,” Donald Trump told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel last week. “If it’s not, you have to fight for the right of the country.” Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? It’s an eerie echo of the warnings that presaged Trump’s 2020 rejection of his defeat: “The only way we’re going to lose this election is if the election is rigged …and we can’t let that happen,” he told a Wisconsin rally that August. There was no way, he repeatedly said, he could lose to Joe Biden, whom he called “the worst candidate in the history of presidential politics.” And when he did, he did everything to ensure he didn’t. That meant dozens of unsuccessful court challenges to Biden’s victories in battleground states, followed by the January 6 invasion of the Capitol to keep the House and Senate from certifying the result and, when that failed, persistent contentions it was wrong.
But what happened in 2020 may look like a walk in the park if Trump challenges the 2024 outcome. His threats to fight any result he deems dishonest may sound familiar, but his preparations to do so are not. This time, his campaign and the Republican National Committee are planning a massive effort including legal challenges against individual voters on a precinct-by-precinct basis to ensure the election meets Trump’s standards of honesty — meaning he wins.
Trump strategist Chris Lacivita told CNN the RNC is hiring thousands of lawyers to “initiate battle on election integrity from an offensive instead of defensive posture.” And the RNC’S definition of “election integrity” is epitomized by its decision to hire Trump attorney and prominent 2020 election denier Christina Bobb as its senior counsel for election integrity. A former correspondent at the Trump-aligned One American News Network, Bobb became a major advocate of Trump’s unproven claims the 2020 election was stolen. More recently, she was among Trump campaign figures indicted in Arizona for trying to overturn its 2020 result.
The GOP’S projected legal campaign would dwarf the dozens of court challenges that the 2020 Trump campaign filed in the seven decisive states where narrow victories gave Biden his 306-232 Electoral College margin. Party co-chair Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law, told Fox Business News’ Maria Bartiromo the goal is to hire 100,000 attorneys, declaring, “We want them in every major polling location across the country.
“We can’t be reactive,” she said. “We have to be pro-active.” As part of this effort, the RNC announced it is establishing “Republican Party War Rooms” in competitive states, including an “Election Integrity Hotline” to answer calls from poll watchers and voters who have observed possible irregularities. In 2020, most such allegations were false. Meanwhile, the Democratic National Committee plans to counter GOP efforts to restrict poll access by investing tens of millions of dollars in “a robust voter protection operation,” spokesperson Alex Floyd told The Associated Press.
The RNC has already filed lawsuits in several states against voting rules it believes help the Democrats. In Arizona, it sued to invalidate the state’s manual for running elections, both on procedural grounds and because it allows out-of-precinct voting.
In Michigan, it claimed officials were not doing enough to maintain the integrity of voter rolls by removing deceased and ineligible voters. But the federal judge to whom the case was assigned, Jane M. Beckering, said in dismissing a similar suit that “Michigan is consistently among the most active states in cancelling the registrations of deceased individuals.”