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    • The Trump-aligned group is already planning lawsuits over the election results
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    The Trump-aligned group is already planning lawsuits over the election results

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    A Trump-aligned group that has filed lawsuits in several challenging swing states voter registration lists already plans to sue this year’s election resultsone of the group’s founders told USA TODAY.

    “We feel compelled to file in defense of this beautiful country,” said Marly Hornik, who co-founded United Sovereign Americans in 2023. “We already have signs and numbers emerging of errors in the process.”

    The organization, which describes itself as non-partisan, is regularly represented by Bruce Castora lawyer for former President Donald Trump in his impeachment process for The January 6 attack on the Capitol.

    Lawsuits from both the group and Republican organizations suggests that widespread voter fraud may be occurring – without providing proof that it is.

    Claims are fueled the false narrative from the former president Donald Trump that he did not lose the 2020 election, which critics fear is a precursor to supporting similar election theft if he loses again. Numerous counts and audits were demonstrated chairman Joe Biden won the last presidential election. Almost all of the more than 60 processes from Trump’s allies in this election have failed.

    “People who want to disrupt the election want to plant the fictional narrative that there is reason to be afraid of the lawsuit. There isn’t,” Justin Levitt, a Loyola Marymount law professor who researches election issues, told USA TODAY.

    Hornik said the group will seek outside audits of the 2024 election. They should file the lawsuits before the results are certified, but probably only after a state has announced results or the media has announced the results, she said. The group could file sooner, but is debating internally whether a court would say a pre-outset lawsuit is premature.

    “For some reason they keep saying they did a great job,” she said, referring to previous election audits. “But every other emerging industry needs to be audited by external auditors. That’s how you really find out what happened.”

    Lawsuits already filed

    United Sovereign Americans has already sued officials in nine different states this year, alleging widespread errors in voter registration data that it says could indicate fraud.

    In a Pennsylvania lawsuit, for example, the group claim there are nearly 3.2 million violations out of nearly 8.8 total records, which “call into question” the reliability and credibility of states’ mid-2022 results. Examples of the alleged errors include “illogical voter history” or “questionable” registrant addresses that the group says violate two federal laws, the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act.

    Attorneys for the Secretary of Pennsylvania answered that the panel’s questions about the data on the documents “are both baseless and irrelevant” under the National Voter Registration Act, which is “”intended as a shield to protect the right to vote, not as a sword to pierce him.”

    Advocates also said the Help America Vote Act is about standards for operating voting machines, not voter registration.

    “Every state has simply told us that these are clerical errors,” Hornik told USA TODAY.

    Sow doubts about the US election?

    The lawsuits by Sovereign Americans United are part of a broader trend of legal challenges to state voter rolls, which also includes several lawsuits from the Republican National Committee and state Republican parties.

    The processes, of which several they have former dismissed, they came despite no evidence of actual widespread voter fraud.

    A review by AP for every case of potential voter fraud in the six swing states that Trump contested in 2020 — Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — he found fewer than 475 cases out of 25.5 million ballots of votes cast for the president. The cases had no impact on the results: Biden won every state by more than 10,000 votes and all six by a total of 311,257 votes.

    Trump’s attorney general, Bill Barr, said in December 2020 that The Justice Department found no evidence of fraud that would change the results.

    A Brennan Center for Justice study from the 2016 election found only 30 referrals of suspected noncitizen voting for further investigation or prosecution in 42 jurisdictions that accounted for 23.5 million of the votes cast in that election.

    For some, the failed legal effort and the lack of evidence of actual widespread fraud raises the question of why lawsuits are being filed, and especially — in many cases — very close to elections.

    “The natural conclusion is that it’s setting the stage to say the election was stolen,” said David Becker, executive director of the nonprofit Center for Election Research and Innovation, which works with Republican and Democratic election officials to build trust in elections. , told USA TODAY. .

    “There is a great risk that the continued noise will teach a sizable portion of the American public — falsely lie to them, falsely persuade them — to distrust their elections,” Levitt said.

    Hornik said that if her organization’s lawsuits cast doubt on the election, it’s because of underlying problems with the systems — even though the group has so far failed to win in court. Most of his lawsuits were filed in August or September. A lawsuit filed in March against Maryland officials was dismissed in May and is on call.

    What would the post-election processes look like?

    Hornik said the group’s pre-election concerns informed its desire to sue over audits not conducted by state officials.

    “We know none of these systems have been fixed. We were fired because of our concerns,” Hornik said. “So there’s no clear reason to have any more confidence in the process than we had before.”

    However, some of the issues it raises may look different from its previous lawsuits.

    United States Sovereigns sued Texas state officials in late August, arguing — as it did in Pennsylvania — that there are widespread errors in voter registration data.

    But in his phone call with USA TODAY, Hornik raised an alleged entirely different issue with the state, claiming early votes in Texas are already being counted “on machines that haven’t failed their certification test.” She said Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson, who was appointed by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, “wrote a waiver” allowing the defective machines to be used.

    That’s not true, Alicia Phillips Pierce, Nelson’s spokeswoman, told USA TODAY.

    “All cars used in Texas meet certification requirements. No waivers have been issued,” Pierce said in an email.

    Lawsuits could depend on the outcome

    Hornik said he would still file lawsuits if Trump wins a state.

    “This is not about one candidate. There are 435 seats in Congress up for re-election or new elections in a few weeks,” Hornik said.

    However, she declined to say whether lawsuits would be filed regardless of the outcome of the election.

    “That really depends on our resources, and we’re going to do everything we can to secure as much of the election as possible for the American people,” Hornik said.

    In addition to Pennsylvania, Texas and Maryland, United Sovereign Americans sued this year to challenge voter rolls in Georgia, Michigan, Colorado, North Carolina, Florida and Ohio.

    “No One Should Have Another Maricopa Mardi Gras”

    After the 2020 election, Trump spread misinformation about the results of the Maricopa County election in Phoenix, including falsely claiming that an election-related database had been deleted. A Republican-backed audit that took months confirmed that President Joe Biden won the county.

    However, the post-election chaos in that county and elsewhere in the country spurred unprecedented state election security efforts, including bulletproof glass, surveillance cameras, panic buttonsand de-escalation training for election workers.

    United Sovereign Americans is not looking to sow chaos after this year’s election, Hornik said.

    “Nobody needs to have another Maricopa Mardi Gras, as I like to call it,” Hornik told USA TODAY.

    But it can try to get voters to come in to verify their identity or correct a material error before their votes can be counted.

    “You get flagged for all the stuff that looks like garbage. And if those people want to vote, that’s fine. They vote provisionally. They come in, show their ID and say, ‘Yes, I’m really here, here’s … my address,'” she said.

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