Trump, supporters have challenged Biden’s GA victory in the courts. Where they stand
President Donald Trump and his supporters have filed a flurry of lawsuits in the weeks following his defeat in Georgia.
To date, none of the filings have accomplished their stated goal of overturning President-elect Joe Biden’s nearly 12,000 vote victory in the state.
Other attempts to stop Georgia from casting its electoral votes have not been successful. Gov. Brian Kemp will not call a special session of the Georgia legislature to select new presidential electors, calling the process unconstitutional. The Georgia Republicans lack the three-fifths majority in the state house and senate to call a session, according to the party’s Senate caucus.
Legal challenges are ongoing, but state election officials have confirmed the outcome and Kemp has signed off on Biden’s win.
“The series of lawsuits that have been filed are, in many respects, are copy and paste jobs of one another,” said Anthony Kreis, an assistant law professor at Georgia State University. “They are rearticulating the same kind of baseless allegations of frauds, these kinds of conspiracy theories (and) these very poor statistical analyses.”
Here’s a brief breakdown of the major lawsuits filed over the state’s election results.
Absentee ballots in Chatham County
Filed: Nov. 4
The claim: The Trump campaign and the Georgia Republican Party alleged elections workers mishandled 53 absentee ballots in Chatham County.
What happened: A judge dismissed the lawsuit. Republican observers could offer no proof said that the absentee ballots were delivered after Georgia’s 7 p.m. deadline, the Savannah Morning News reports.
Brooks v. Mahoney
Filed: Nov. 11
The goal: Four Georgia voters claimed “illegal votes” in several counties — including Augusta/Richmond, Chatham, Clayton, Cobb, DeKalb and Fulton counties — placed the results of the Nov. 3 election in doubt.
What happened: The lawsuit was voluntarily dismissed by the plaintiffs. The voters did not answer or file for a summary judgment.
Lin Wood v. Raffensperger
Filed: Nov. 13
The claim: Wood wanted to stop the certification of Georgia’s election results. He claims that Georgia’s absentee ballot signature match and audit procedures violated Georgia law and his constitutional rights.
What happened: A district judge dismissed the suit, stating that granting Wood’s request “would breed confusion, undermine the public’s trust in the election, and potentially disenfranchise of over one million Georgians.” A federal appeals court upheld the ruling.
Pearson v. Kemp, a.k.a the Kraken lawsuit
Filed: Nov. 25
The claim: This lawsuit was filed by pro-Trump attorney Sidney Powell. The lawsuit falsely claims Dominion Voting Systems, the company that provides Georgia’s voting machines, was part of an effort to fraudulently manipulate the vote count and rig the election in favor of Joe Biden.
Dominion, according to the lawsuit, was “founded by foreign oligarchs and dictators to ensure computerized ballot-stuffing and vote manipulation to whatever level was needed to make certain Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez never lost another election.” The lawsuit wanted the election results to be decertified. Kemp would declare Trump Georgia’s winner.
What happened: The lawsuit was dismissed for, among other reasons, being filed too late and for requesting “perhaps the most extraordinary relief ever sought” in an election case, GPB reports. The ruling was appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
Boland v. Raffensperger
Filed: Nov. 30
The claim: Voter Paul Andrew Boland sued Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and other state elections officials contesting the outcome. Boland claimed 20,312 ballots were cast by people who are no longer Georgia residents. He also claimed decreased signature verification for mail-in ballots took place during the election.
What happened: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports the lawsuit was dismissed by a Fulton County judge Tuesday for several reasons. Boland didn’t have the standing to file a lawsuit, and those state elections officials were not proper defendants in such litigation. Further, the case was moot because the election has already been certified
Trump campaign sues Georgia
Filed: Dec. 4
The claim: The Trump campaign and David Shafer, the chairman of the state Republican party, claim “thousands” of examples of “low-tech” voting irregularities. Among the claims, Trump’s team alleges people who weren’t registered to vote, but they voted anyway. Some residents registered to votes after state deadlines. Some people who registered to vote were too young under state law, according to a tweet from Shafer.
What happened: The lawsuit was dismissed by a Fulton County judge for filing errors. The lawsuit was refiled, the AJC reports. (The original filing is attached below.)
Texas AG’s Supreme Court appeal
Filed: Dec. 7
The claim: In a 154-page filing to the U.S. Supreme Court, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued over election results in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan. The goal is to scrap Biden’s wins and to get state legislatures to appoint new presidential electors.
Among the claims, the document alleges officials in these states used the COVID-19 pandemic to “(usurp) their legislatures’ authority and unconstitutionally revised their state’s election statutes.” These changes “opened the door to election irregularities in various forms.” Mail-in ballots weren’t in proper custody. Signature verification and witness requirements were weakened.
What happened: The states, Georgia included, must file a response by Thursday. The court must agree to hear the lawsuit. Experts say it’s a “long shot.” Georgia’s Republican attorney general Chris Carr issued a statement saying Paxton “is constitutionally, legally and factually wrong about Georgia.”
Kreis, the Georgia State professor, said Paxton’s claims about absentee rejection rates in Georgia fails to account for the state’s new curing period where voters can fix issues with their ballots.
“A basic understanding of Georgia law would reveal that (Paxton’s) legal theory has holes in it the size you could drive Mack trucks through,” Kreis said.
‘Casting doubt’ on election process
Kreis said the real purpose of these lawsuits is to “muddy the waters” and cast doubt over the election process. He warns there could be a concerted push to making voting by mail harder using “groundless arguments” like these as evidence.
“The truth of the matter is that no court is going to get between the certification process and the electorate when there is absolutely zero evidence of irregularity,” he said. “There’s nothing there.”
While courts can quickly dismiss cases, the claims made in them can “linger and fester” in the corners of social media and in the court of public opinion, he said.
“People come to believe that these things are a matter of difficult truth,” he said. “When they in fact have been ... misguided or the allegations are ground in some kind of misunderstanding.”
This story was originally published December 10, 2020 at 12:00 AM.