As the Republican Party faces mounting challenges ahead of the midterm elections, Donald Trump is intensifying efforts to exert influence over the U.S. electoral process. The Department of Justice has filed lawsuits in nearly every state seeking access to voter registration records. Trump has revived his long-standing opposition to mail-in voting, triggering a legal battle that has reached the Supreme Court. He has also sought to link federal anti-terrorism funding to how states and localities administer elections. Additionally, he has threatened to withhold federal election funds from states that refuse to alter voter registration procedures, and has clashed with Republican lawmakers over a comprehensive election reform bill. Yet as these initiatives stall, the DOJ took an extraordinary step on Thursday—just 12 days before Election Day—requesting a court order to preemptively block the certification of Alaska’s Senate election results in the event of a loss by Republican Senator Dan Sullivan. The move has shocked current and former election officials across the political spectrum. Some senior election law experts have described the action as legally baseless, suggesting it reflects a desperate strategy. The Trump administration appears to believe that winning these lawsuits would determine the outcome of the election. However, legally speaking, the DOJ’s case appears to have no viable path forward. Alaska’s Supreme Court had already dismissed a similar challenge in June, a precedent that typically concludes any further legal challenges to state-level election administration.
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Original: toutiao.com/article/1879994758748171/
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