Amid Trump’s Post-Election Chaos, Hold Lawyers to Account on the Vote Count | Opinion

October 5, 2020 | Tom Rogers and Timothy E. Wirth | Newsweek

An integral part of the Trump campaign strategy to undermine the legitimacy of the November election is to deploy 50,000 “poll watchers” into the field to challenge the validity of votes cast, particularly in swing states. Among these election disruptors will be a heavy contingent of lawyers who will be filing legal challenges geared toward both undermining the legitimacy of election results and denying the validity of vast numbers of cast votes.

While these legal challenges will be mounted under the pretense of preserving voting integrity and ensuring illegal ballots have not been cast, those bases will thinly veil their true, nefarious purpose—to deprive minority and urban voters of having their votes counted. To underscore the voluminous number of legal actions planned, the chief counsel of the Republican National Committee said legal work is “going to be on steroids this year.”

By definition, it will be lawyers pursuing these actions. But in most, if not almost all instances, the lawyers bringing them will be unable to make the most basic, required representations to the court—i.e., that the lawsuit is not “being presented for an improper purpose,” and that the contentions contain a “nonfrivolous argument” regarding the application of law. In reality, these lawsuits will be brought for the purpose of depriving hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of voters of their constitutional right to vote, and will contain frivolous legal arguments to that end. …