CLC Provides Critical Guidance on Mass Challenges to Election Administrators 

Washington, D.C. – Today, Campaign Legal Center (CLC) submitted letters to election offices in five states regarding frivolous mass challenges to voters’ eligibility: Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The letters provide guidance for election officials about what the standards for challenges are in their respective states and how to dismiss illegitimate challenges to voter eligibility. 

“To make every vote count, we need a system that is free and fair to ensure that everyone’s voice is heard,” said Danielle Lang, Campaign Legal Center’s senior director for voting rights. “Partisan actors have shamefully weaponized mass challenges as part of a widespread effort to harass election workers, intimidate voters, and create unnecessary barriers to the ballot. This is already a busy time for election officials across the country, and they shouldn’t have to waste valuable resources responding to unfounded and frivolous challenges. Our hope is that these letters will provide the necessary guidance so that election workers can refocus their efforts on what really matters—ensuring a free and fair election where every vote is counted.”  

BACKGROUND

Election offices are being inundated with baseless mass challenges to voters’ eligibility. Just last month, Georgia’s Gwinnett County Board of Elections received challenges to the eligibility of some 37,500 voters—more than six percent of the county’s total registered voters, and more than three times President Biden’s 2020 margin of victory in Georgia. These unfounded challenges, orchestrated by outside partisan groups, risk disenfranchising eligible voters and take election officials’ attention away from their many critical tasks that ensure a smoothly run and secure election. 

Partisan actors have weaponized laws in many states that allow private citizens to challenge their peers’ right to vote, either before or on Election Day. These mass challenges can be based on meritless allegations such as a voter having changed addresses, and often rely on faulty data sets containing inaccurate or outdated information. If successful, these challenges can lead to eligible voters’ removal from the rolls, preventing them from participating in an election in which they are legally entitled to vote.  

For more information, click here or reach out to CLC’s Communications Manager for Voting & Elections, Matty Tate-Smith, at [email protected].