United States – The GOP is litigating in three key swing states to attempt to prevent what they describe as legally impermissible overseas voting while their presidential candidate – Donald Trump – engages in vote-seeking among overseas US citizens in a contest with the Democratic VP candidate Kamala Harris.
The cases arrive as the GOP has gone on the legal offense across the country via lawsuits Republicans claim are meant to help rebuild voting public trust because people are not legally casting ballots, but Democrats and constitutional scholars argue are designed with the goal of confusing voters about the integrity of the process, as reported by Reuters.
Legal Battles Over Non-Resident Voting
In lawsuits in Michigan and North Carolina state courts on Tuesday and on October 2, the Republican National Committee claimed state laws on elections were unconstitutional because they allowed some non-residents, including US citizens who have never lived in the states in question but whose relatives had, to vote in the states.
‘North Carolinians and Michiganders should not have their votes canceled by those who’ve never lived in the state,’ said RNC Chairman Michael Whatley in the statement on Tuesday.
In another federal case filed on Sept 30 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the Republican Congress members claimed that their state was wrongly excusing overseas voters from the verification procedures.
All the cases were filed close to a month before the Nov 5 election. Judges have not yet made their decisions, and the procedures for overseas voting for the states are still in operation.
The DNC said in a motion to intervene in the Pennsylvania case that the Republican strategy is to “reject dozens of thousands of ballots filled by legally registered military and overseas voters.”
Ongoing Overseas Voting Procedures
That means the office of Pennsylvania’s Republican secretary of state dismissed the Republican lawsuit as an effort to intimidate voters before the election and noted that perjury on voting registration is a felony.
Next Friday, there is a hearing slated.
Patrick Gannon, North Carolina’s state board of elections spokesman who defended Republicans reacting to the photo ID law, said that the law has been in place since 2005, and the citizens registered as Democrats and challenged by Republicans would not have any chance to vote otherwise. He said that early voting has already commenced in the state.
“The time to challenge the rules for voter eligibility is well before an election, not after votes have already been cast,” Gannon said on Friday.
Overseas Voters: A Small but Important Block
Out of 2.9 Million Americans who are registered to vote in the 2020 elections from other countries, only below 8% of them actually voted, which the Federal Voting Assistance Program, the U.S government agency that assists the members of the armed forces and other U.S citizens to vote from overseas said.
Trump has sought the votes of citizens that live in the United States but outside their home country, and this week offered the expats a chance to pay less in taxes through ceasing ‘double taxation,’ as Trump put it. (The policies insist that some Americans living in other countries have to part with their income to both the American government and foreign governments.) Unfortunately, his campaign has not elaborated on this proposed policy any further in the recent past.
Polling and Electoral Landscape
A poll for Reuters/Ipsos released on Tuesday, October 8, revealed that Harris outpolled Trump 46% to 43% nationally, though the states that mean it are determined by the Electoral College, which is expected to come down to seven swing states, as reported by Reuters.
Both states are traditional ‘swing states,’ meaning Trump won Michigan and Pennsylvania in the previous 2016 election, while Biden, the current Democratic President, won them in the 2020 elections. Trump triumphed in the state, but it voted for former Democratic President Barack Obama in 2008, and it is a battleground state this year.