Dem
51
GOP
49
The RNC, which is now a de facto wholly owned subsidiary of Donald Trump's campaign, is pulling out all the stops to win this one. One front is the judiciary. Since Lara Trump took over as vice chair, the RNC has greatly expanded its program of filing preemptive lawsuits hither and yon.
For example, in Arizona, Michigan, and Nevada, the RNC is suing to force local officials to remove voters from the rolls—despite federal law limiting such actions in the months before an election (when there is no time left for due process to play out). It is also suing to prevent absentee ballots that arrive after Election Day from being counted, even in states where state law clearly states that ballots postmarked before or on Election Day must be counted if they arrive within some period of time after Election Day, typically 3-7 days. These are frivolous lawsuits that the RNC will surely lose because the laws are clear. But the goal isn't to win. It is to convince the public that elections are rigged, so that if Trump loses and claims that the election was fixed against him, his supporters will easily believe it (and possibly riot again).
One of the reasons Trump wanted to remove Ronna Romney McDaniel was her refusal to waste RNC money on pointless lawsuits simply to prime the public not to accept the election results. She wanted to spend the money running ads for Republican candidates, not throwing it away on lawsuits she knew had no chance. RNC Co-chair Lara Trump thinks differently about this and notes that there are currently over 90 lawsuits in progress about "election integrity," which is a euphemism for making it harder (or impossible) for some people to vote. The party platform approved Monday had a plank about election rules. It calls for voter ID everywhere, paper ballots, proof of citizenship and voting only in person on Election Day. All of these are areas where Donald Trump has falsely claimed there is fraud. The lawsuits always fail because they can't prove that which is not true. There is hardly any election fraud.
Another thing the RNC is doing is trying to delegitimize Democratic election officials in swing states. Many of the secretaries of state in the swing states are elected Democrats, so the RNC is attacking them for rigging the elections. Of course, they can't show a whit of proof because there isn't any. But, again, the goal is to convince its voters that the election process is fixed.
Still another battleground is the presence or absence of a date on the envelope absentee ballots use. There is no valid reason for asking the voter to fill in a date. If it postmarked before or on Election Day, that is sufficient evidence the vote was before or on Election Day. The voter's date is irrelevant. Some voters forget to put in the date, and the RNC wants those ballots thrown out, even though the date is pointless.
The Biden campaign is fully aware of all this. A campaign spokesman, Charles Lutvak, said: "Every MAGA Republican lawsuit taking aim at our right to vote looks like another brick in the foundation of their efforts to try to steal this election when they lose in November." (V)