A Trump-aligned group that has filed lawsuits in several swing states challenging voter registration lists is already planning to sue over this year’s election results, one of the group’s founders told USA TODAY.
“We feel compelled to file in defense of this beautiful country,” said Marly Hornik, who co-founded United Sovereign Americans in 2023. “We already have signs and numbers coming in of errors inside of the process.”
The organization, which describes itself as nonpartisan, is regularly represented by Bruce Castor, a lawyer for former President Donald Trump in his impeachment trial for the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Lawsuits from both the group and Republican organizations suggest widespread voter fraud could be happening – without providing proof that it is.
The claims feed into the false narrative from former President Donald Trump that he didn’t lose the 2020 election, which critics fear is a precursor to claiming similar election theft if he loses again. Numerous counts and audits showed President Joe Biden won the last presidential election. Nearly all of more than 60 lawsuits from Trump allies in the wake of that election failed.
“The people seeking to disrupt the election want to plant the fictitious narrative that there’s reason to freak out about the process. There isn’t,” Justin Levitt, a Loyola Marymount law professor who researches election issues, told USA TODAY.
Hornik said the group would be seeking to conduct external audits of the 2024 election. It would need to file the suits before results are certified, but likely only after either a state has called results or the media has announced results, she said. The group could file sooner, but is debating internally whether a court would say a pre-result lawsuit is premature.
“For some reason they keep coming out that they did a great job,” she said, referring to past election audits. “But every other industry in creation has to be audited by external auditors. That’s how you find out really what happened.”
Lawsuits already filed
United Sovereign Americans has already sued officials in nine different states this year, alleging widespread errors in voter registration data that it says could indicate fraud.
In a Pennsylvania lawsuit, for example, the group alleges there are nearly 3.2 million violations out of almost 8.8 total registrations, which “cast into doubt” the reliability and credibility of the states 2022 midterm results. Examples of the alleged errors include “illogical voter history” or “questionable” registrant addresses that the group says violate two federal laws, the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act.
Lawyers for the secretary of Pennsylvania responded that the group’s questions about dates on paperwork “are both factually baseless and irrelevant” under the National Voter Registration Act, which is “‘intended as a shield to protect the right to vote, not as a sword to pierce it.'”
The lawyers also said the Help America Vote Act pertains to standards for operating voting machines, not to voter registration.
“Every single state has simply told us that these are clerical errors,” Hornik told USA TODAY.
Sowing doubt about U.S. elections?
United Sovereign Americans’ lawsuits fit into a wider trend of legal challenges to state voter rolls, which also includes several lawsuits from the Republican National Committee and state Republican parties.
The lawsuits, several of which have been dismissed, have come despite no proof of actual widespread voter fraud.
A review by the AP of every potential voter fraud case in the six swing states Trump disputed in 2020 – Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin – found fewer than 475 cases out of 25.5 million ballots cast for president. The cases had no impact on the results: Biden won each state by more than 10,000 votes, and all six by a combined 311,257 votes.
Trump’s own attorney general, Bill Barr, said in December of 2020 that the Justice Department had uncovered no evidence of fraud that would change results.
A Brennan Center for Justice study of the 2016 election uncovered only 30 referrals of suspected noncitizen voting for further investigation or prosecution in 42 jurisdictions that accounted for 23.5 million of that election’s votes.
For some, the failing legal effort and lack of evidence of actual widespread fraud raises the question of why the lawsuits are being filed at all, and especially – in many cases – very close to the election.
“The natural conclusion is it’s to set the stage for claiming an election was stolen,” David Becker, executive director of the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation & Research, which works with Republican and Democratic election officials to strengthen confidence in elections, told USA TODAY.
“There is a large risk that the continuing noise teaches a sizable portion of the American public – incorrectly, falsely lies to them and convinces them – they shouldn’t have faith in their elections,” said Levitt.
Hornik said if her organization’s lawsuits cast doubt on elections, it’s because of the underlying problems in the systems – even if the group has so far failed to win in court. Most of its lawsuits were filed in August or September. A lawsuit filed in March against Maryland officials was dismissed in May and is on appeal.
What would the post-election lawsuits look like?
Hornik said the group’s pre-election concerns have informed its desire to sue for audits that aren’t conducted by state officials.
“We know that none of these systems were repaired. We were dismissed in our concerns,” Hornik said. “So there’s no clear reason to have any more faith in the process than we did prior.”
Still, some of the issues it raises may look different from its previous lawsuits.
United Sovereign Americans sued Texas state officials in late August, arguing – as it did in Pennsylvania – that there are widespread errors in voter registration data.
But in her phone call with USA TODAY, Hornik raised an entirely different alleged issue with the state, claiming early votes in Texas are already being counted “on machines that failed their certification test.” She said Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson, who was appointed by Republican Governor Greg Abbott, “wrote a waiver” allowing failing machines to be used.
That’s not true, Alicia Phillips Pierce, a spokesperson for Nelson, told USA TODAY.
“All the machines used in Texas meet certification requirements. No waivers have been issued,” Pierce said in an email.
Lawsuits could depend on outcome
Hornik said she would still file lawsuits if Trump won a state.
“It’s not about one candidate. There are 435 congressional seats up for re-election or new election in weeks,” Hornik said.
However, she declined to say if the lawsuits would be filed no matter the election outcome.
“That really depends on our resources, and we’re going to do everything we can to secure as much of the election as we can for the American people,” Hornik said.
In addition to Pennsylvania, Texas, and Maryland, United Sovereign Americans has sued this year to challenge voter rolls in Georgia, Michigan, Colorado, North Carolina, Florida, and Ohio.
‘No one needs to have another Maricopa Mardi Gras’
After the 2020 election, Trump spread misinformation about the election results in Phoenix’s Maricopa County, including falsely claiming an election-related database had been deleted. A Republican-backed audit that took months confirmed President Joe Biden won the county.
Still, the chaos in the election’s aftermath in that county and elsewhere in the country has spurred unprecedented state election security efforts, including bulletproof glass, security cameras, panic buttons, and de-escalation training for election workers.
United Sovereign Americans isn’t looking to sow chaos in the aftermath of this year’s election, Hornik said.
“No one needs to have another Maricopa Mardi Gras, as I like to call it,” Hornik told USA TODAY.
But it may seek to have voters come in to verify their identity or correct a clerical error before their votes can be counted.
“You flag all the stuff that looks like garbage. And if those people want to vote, that’s fine. They vote provisionally. They come in, they show ID, and they say, ‘Yes, I really am here, here’s … my address,'” she said.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump-aligned group is already planning lawsuits over election results
