Dem
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GOP
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The RNC has a new chairman, Michael Whatley, who was handpicked by Donald Trump. So, naturally, the new chairman is expected to reflect Trump's worldview in many ways. One basic principle of Trump's worldview is: (mis)use the courts to get what you want. Whatley is preparing to do just that.
What Whatley is going to do is hire thousands of lawyers and file more lawsuits in order to win. They will challenge the rules in general, and individual voters in particular, in strongly Democratic areas. He plans to especially target minority voters. He is also going to run an aggressive operation monitoring the vote. The new motto at the RNC is "election integrity." Whatley said: "It's an extremely high priority for the President." Indeed, if the RNC lawyers can keep enough Democrats from voting, Trump could win.
But this may be easier said than done. The DNC has far more money than the RNC and is also capable of hiring many lawyers. Also, if the RNC starts funneling incoming money to pay Trump's lawyers, there will be less left over to hire election lawyers. In addition, once donors realize that their donations are being used to pay Trump's bills, they may stop donating, limiting even more what the RNC can do. And the RNC is really the only committee that can hire poll workers and lawyers with an eye to suppressing the Democratic vote. The NRSC is going to use every penny to try to flip the Senate and the NRCC is going to need every penny to try to hang onto the House.
Both parties are already stockpiling money for lawsuits. As of the end of February, the RNC legal pot had $11 million on hand vs. the DNC's legal pot with $27 million.
Filing lawsuits is easy, but judges aren't stupid. When the RNC brings a lawsuit that clearly has a partisan reason, the judges are going to see that, even if the Democrats' lawyer in the case forgets to mention it, which is exceedingly unlikely. In 2020, Trump filed lawsuit after lawsuit and lost virtually every one. Consequently, spending a ton of money on lawyers and then losing a bunch of lawsuits could mean that money that could have gone to help individual candidates will go to all the new lawyers. It is far from obvious that suing your way to victory is a better strategy than spending the money on ads for candidates, but what Trump wants, Trump gets.
One lawsuit the RNC already filed is challenging Michigan for not keeping the voter rolls up to date. In other words, it seeks to purge voters in Democratic areas. Unfortunately, the case was assigned to a judge who threw out a similar case 3 weeks ago, ruling that the state was correctly following federal law. A similar suit is ongoing in Nevada and there will be more of the same.
Another tricky issue is early voting. Trump opposes it but Whatley supports it. If the RNC tells people to use absentee ballots and simultaneously tries to get judges to throw out as many absentee ballots as possible, the plan could backfire. (V)