CNN: Avalanche of early lawsuits could pave way for disputes over Tuesday’s election results

(CNN) – Scores of pre-election lawsuits have been filed in battleground states ahead of Tuesday’s election, signaling the possibility of even more high-stakes and contentious court fights as voting wraps up and local officials start counting ballots.

Much of the current litigation focuses on the processes surrounding how votes are cast and counted – with some lawsuits seizing on the same debunked conspiracy theories about election fraud that propelled the court efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

In all, 120 cases surrounding voting had been filed as of November 3 – more than half of which have sought to restrict access to the ballot– according to the Democracy Docket, a liberal-leaning voting rights and media platform that tracks election litigation. By comparison, 68 election lawsuits had been filed before Election Day in 2020, the group said.

“What we saw in 2020 was this effort to undermine the elections, but, for the most part, it happened after the elections,” said Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections at the organization Common Cause, which advocates on democracy issues. “This time what we are seeing is the prep beforehand.” …

This year, the Republican National Committee has engaged in a major drive to recruit Republican poll workers. And national and state GOP parties have gone to court to demand proof they are being hired. The fights have centered on the requirements imposed on poll workers and what records Republicans can obtain about the workers’ identities, while other lawsuits have taken aim at the policies for poll observers. …

Albert, of Common Cause, said that the demands around the country that more Republican workers be hired could be a precursor for attempts after the election to attempt to toss out ballots from election sites in dispute.

She said she’s worried that Republicans “are going to basically say, ‘If an election wasn’t run exactly perfect – if we didn’t have an even split of poll workers – then, all of those ballots don’t count,’ which is absolutely ridiculous and nonsensical. An election has never run perfect in the history of the world.”