Democrats Launch Effort to Win 2020 Election… in Court

This article first appeared on PJMedia on November 1, 2019.

Democrats have launched a multi-state effort in courts across the nation seeking to tinker with the rules of the 2020 election to help oust President Donald Trump from the White House. These lawsuits are the latest in a longstanding push to use the courts to alter election rules, all in the name of “civil rights.” The lawsuits are funded by dark money sources, and not-so-dark money sources such as George Soros’ Open Society Institute.

Recently launched lawsuits in North Carolina, Texas, and Michigan seek to constitutionalize small election administration changes and have been filed by Hillary Clinton’s lawyer, Marc Elias at Perkins Coie.

In North Carolina, the North Carolina Democratic Party is challenging a number of state laws designed to promote the integrity of elections and make election administration more efficient. The lawsuit alleges that black voters particularly like to vote early ahead of Election Day and therefore any restrictions on their ability to do so violate the rights of black voters under the North Carolina state constitution.

The lawsuit demands that early voting be expanded by the courts so that black voters can get to the polls easier.

North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein can hardly be counted on to defend North Carolina’s duly passed election laws. Stein previously engaged in ethically questionable conduct in pulling the plug on a defense of North Carolina’s voter ID law. His office has also been aggressively hiding the extent of alien registration and voting in North Carolina.

Naturally, progressives oppose laws designed to make the voting process fair and equal. They prefer giving counties – such as Travis – the power to manipulate early voting sites where Democratic Party influence can prompt government employees into opening a pop-up voting site where large numbers of Democrats gather for an event. Though Republicans may be more prevalent in smaller rural counties in Texas, there aren’t the large gatherings where manipulation of pop-up voting sites could benefit GOP candidates. It’s the large urban centers of San Antonio, Dallas, Houston and El Paso where pop-up early voting sites can particularly help Democrats

Instead of Texas legislators writing the rules of how elections are fairly run in Texas, these lawyers and funders want a federal judge to administer the election process.

The lawsuit is part of an integrated Democrat strategy to secure young voters. Texas Democrats have integrated their legal strategy with their political operation. They want to ensure that when any rallies with young college students are held in Austin next fall they can funnel the voters out of the arena and straight into a mobile voting booth.

And no, this is not a tactic that translates nicely to benefit Republicans. For starters, the election officials in the large urban Texas counties will not be as responsive to GOP requests for mobile voting sites. My organization, the Public Interest Legal Foundation, has learned firsthand how unresponsive county officials are. We have had to sue Harris County (Houston) just to obtain public records regarding alien registration and voting that everybody admits exist. If county election officials are keen to hide the extent of alien registration and voting, they are not easily going to send a mobile voting unit to an NRA meeting.

Michigan should scare the GOP out of their skin.

The chief state election official elected in 2018 is a Soros-bot through and through. Jocelyn Benson got her bachelor of arts from Wellesley College, master of philosophy from Oxford University, and law degree from Harvard Law School. And no, I’m not suggesting that’s a good thing. She has been active on the most radical fringes of the ideological wars involving election process.

When it was discovered that local election officials in Southfield, Michigan, were canceling the votes of scores of voters, she encouraged watchdogs to move along, there was nothing to see, and don’t ask for any records.

In Michigan, a pop-up progressive PAC is challenging a state law that… wait for it… requires absentee ballots to be rejected if the signatures on the ballot don’t match the signatures on file.

Such laws prevent third parties from voting absentee ballots for someone else, a frequent occurrence. I tried and won one such case when I was an attorney at the Justice Department. In that case, absentee ballot collectors roamed the community gathering ballots, sometimes voting them, and sometimes filling out the ballot envelope. Signature comparisons are an important tool to prevent voter fraud.

Naturally, progressives oppose the procedure. In this case, it’s the “Priorities USA Foundation” as plaintiff. Priorities USA raised almost $7,000,000 in 2017 and spent $2,407,682 on Marc Elias’ law firm for cases like this designed to alter election process rules.

Scott Walter of the Capital Research Center, a group dedicated to cataloging the hundreds of millions of dollars the left spends to transform America, says the movement of cash through leftist groups is routine for groups like Priorities USA. “Priorities’ 501(c)(3) sent $50,000 to a second c3 that is part of a ‘dark money’ empire run by Arabella Advisors, in order to have Arabella in turn pass it on to a third group that is a c4.” Walter reminds us that after Citizens United, you cannot expect consistency on the left as “all c4s are to them evil ‘dark money.’”

In the Michigan lawsuit, we can expect a quick favorable settlement from the Secretary of State. After all, they are on the same team despite what the complaint says – Team Defeat Trump. If they don’t collude to reach a settlement, they picked a favorable federal court in Detroit to sue. The Detroit News:

The lawsuit was filed in the Eastern District of Michigan, where Democratic-nominated judges hold a 14-6 advantage and are more likely to be selected in the random draw process. Republican-nominated judges have a 4-0 edge in the Western District of Michigan, which covers Lansing, the home of state government.

These three cases are just a taste of things to come. The Left devotes less money toward policy – such as television advertisements talking about issues – than they do process. Process rules, such as early voting, opposition to voter ID, felon voting, same-day registration, mandatory registration, out of precinct voting and even more radical proposals such as ranked-choice voting, are how progressives think they will finally reach their American utopia.

They believe if they tinker with the rules, they tinker with the outcomes.

Unfortunately, they might be right.

Editors’ note: As a 501(c)(3) organization, Capital Research Center does not engage in activities designed to influence the outcome of elections.