Republicans file lawsuits to challenge overseas ballots — including those coming from military personnel

Republicans have filed a flurry of lawsuits in battleground states to target ballots cast by American voters living abroad — including military service members.

Critics warn the move is designed to cast doubt on the legitimacy of 2024’s forthcoming presidential election.

A federal lawsuit from a Pennsylvania Republican’s congressional delegation has accused the state of enabling fraudulent ballots by failing to verify the identities of voters who cast their votes while living overseas. And in Michigan and North Carolina, the Republican National Committee filed lawsuits alleging that the states have unlawfully allowed ballots cast by people who can’t claim residence in the state.

The lawsuits challenge the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, a 40-year-old federal law that affirms the right to vote to US citizens who live overseas. The law requires states to allow certain citizens to register and vote by mail in federal elections.

The lawsuits followed Donald Trump’s baseless claims on his Truth Social, where he raged without evidence on September 23 that Democrats are “working so hard to get millions of votes from Americans living overseas.”

“Actually, they are getting ready to CHEAT!” he wrote.

Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest man, also amplified baseless allegations of overseas voter fraud, including sharing a post on X that claimed Democrats “plan to steal elections using ‘overseas’ ballots.”

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Two days later, Trump shared Musk’s post on his Truth Social and wrote: “Lawyers at RNC — STOP THIS FRAUD, NOW!!!”

The RNC filed lawsuits on October 8.

“In over 25 years of working in elections, in both Republican and Democratic administrations, and with election officials of both parties, I don’t recall any of them, or any elected leader from either party, ever denigrating this important program, until Trump’s false claims this week,” David Becker, the founder and executive director of The Center for Election Innovation and Research, told the Associated Press.

Six of Pennsylvania’s eight Republican congressmen claim that the state has made it possible for ineligible voters to “register to vote without verification of identity or eligibility but receive a ballot by email and then vote a ballot without providing identification at any step in the process.”

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Pennsylvania has mailed out 25,000 ballots to Americans abroad so far this year, according to Pennsylvania’s Secretary of State Al Schmidt, who is the defendant in the case.

Cleta Mitchell, who joined efforts from Trump and his allies to reverse his election loss in 2020, told a right-wing talk radio show this week that she “helped” organize the lawsuits, and that more were on the way.

The Pennsylvania lawsuit was filed just “two weeks after counties started mailing ballots to military and overseas voters, and it baselessly challenges Pennsylvania law, which provides clear procedures for processing applications by overseas voters,” according to Amy Gulli, a spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Department of State.

“Our service members deserve to have their votes counted,” she added.

The RNC’s lawsuit in Michigan attacks the state’s “unconstitutional” guidance to election officials for overseas voters, and demands that Michigan’s secretary of state reject set aside ballots cast by overseas voters who have never lived in the state.

In North Carolina, the group has similarly accused election officials of allowing people who never lived in the state to unconstitutionally cast their ballots there.

There already exists a rigorous system of checks and balances, as well as prosecutorial power, to ensure that only eligible citizens are voting abroad. Voters overseas must meet the same identification and registration requirements as all other voters, including providing proof of a residential address in the US, under penalty of law, according to Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law.

Those voters must vote in the last state where they were a resident.

Roughly three-quarters of the 1.3 million US military service members are eligible to cast absentee ballots while stationed abroad, according to the Federal Voting Assistance Program.

“It’s really disturbing to see lawsuits that are attempting to undermine Americans abroad and the military and their right to vote,” Martha McDevitt-Pugh, international chair of Democrats Abroad, told The Independent.

Democrats Abroad serves as the Democratic Party’s official organization for US citizens living temporarily or permanently abroad.

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Nearly 1 million overseas ballots were cast in 2020 elections.

In 2020, President Joe Biden increased his narrow margin of victory thanks to ballots from Americans abroad. Arizona counted more than 18,000 abroad ballots, and Biden won the state by roughly 10,000 votes. In Georgia, a state that Biden won by just under 12,,000 votes, officials there counted another 18,000 abroad ballots.

Republicans now are hoping to eliminate those narrow margins by invalidating overseas voters, McDevitt-Pugh told The Independent. Those legal arguments also are hoping to plant seeds of doubt among lawmakers and election officials, and “create a situation where they can not only subvert but challenge” the outcome, she said.

Republican-led litigation joins a nationwide campaign echoing Republicans’ 2020 threats to election results, raising frivolous legal challenges and spurious arguments to create an impression that elections are insecure, corruptly run, and ripe for fraud, according to democratic advocacy group Protect Democracy.

Republican groups have filed nearly 100 election-related lawsuits across the US this year alone.

“They’re part of a messaging strategy, not a legal strategy,” according to Protect Democracy policy advocate Ben Raderstorf, who has coined the term “zombie lawsuits” to describe the attacks.

“These lawsuits could be like zombies,” he wrote. “They’re clearly dead before the election. But if Donald Trump loses, they could rise again in an attempt to overturn the results. ... Regardless of whether this legal strategy will get anywhere, in any courtroom, it telegraphs a clear intent to subvert the election if Donald Trump loses.”