New wave of GOP lawsuits targets overseas ballots in key swing states
Republicans have filed lawsuits challenging overseas and military voting on Michigan, North Carolina and Pennsylvania weeks out from Election Day.
Republicans have filed lawsuits over the past week in three pivotal battleground states seeking to challenge the legitimacy of some ballots cast by U.S. citizens living abroad, including military members, arguing that some votes are particularly prone to fraud.
Election officials in those states — Michigan, North Carolina and Pennsylvania — and nonpartisan voting experts strongly defended the previously uncontroversial overseas voting rules, arguing that the suits amounted to efforts to further lay the groundwork to question the veracity of the election results next month.
The Republican National Committee last week sued election officials in North Carolina and Michigan in state courts, alleging they had on their books unlawful rules that extended overseas voting eligibility to people whose residency in those states had not been verified.
And in a suit filed in a federal court last week, a group of Republican members of Congress from Pennsylvania made similar allegations, arguing that overseas ballots in the state are at risk of fraud because those voters do not face the same voter ID requirements that other absentee voters do.
The Pennsylvania lawsuit, filed by Republican Reps. Guy Reschenthaler, Dan Meuser, Glenn Thompson, Lloyd Smucker and Mike Kelly against Republican Secretary of State Al Schmidt, alleged that Schmidt issued guidance to local election officials in the state allowing some U.S. citizens voting overseas — a group that includes military personnel — to be exempted from voter ID requirements.
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