Republicans lay legal groundwork for election challenges

Arizona (Reuters): In Arizona, one of seven competitive U.S. states that are expected to decide the 2024 presidential election, an advocacy group founded by Donald Trump adviser Stephen Miller is advancing a bold legal theory: that judges can throw out election results over "failures or irregularities" by local officials.

The lawsuit by the America First Legal Foundation, a conservative advocacy group, says the court in such cases should be able to toss the election results and order new rounds of voting in two counties in Arizona, where Democratic candidate Vice President Kamala Harris is leading Trump in the polls by a razor-thin margin.

Almost four years after former president Trump and his allies tried and failed to overturn his election defeat with a flurry of more than 60 hastily arranged lawsuits, Republicans have launched an aggressive legal campaign laying the groundwork to challenge potential losses.

The Republican National Committee says it is involved in more than 120 lawsuits across 26 states, in a strategy that some legal experts and voting rights groups say is meant to undercut faith in the system.

Republicans say the lawsuits are aimed at restoring faith in elections by ensuring people don't vote illegally. Trump and his allies have falsely claimed that his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden was tainted by widespread fraud.

While the Arizona case is likely a long shot, legal experts say it fits with a pattern of Republican-backed lawsuits that appear aimed at sowing doubts about the legitimacy of the election before it occurs and providing fodder for challenging the results after the fact.