In battleground Pennsylvania, election officials 'bracing' for onslaught of litigation
In the battleground state of Pennsylvania, which experts say could decide the winner of the presidential race, election officials have been preparing for months for millions of residents to cast their highly anticipated votes. Early voting is underway in every county, with mail-in-ballots available for voters to cast in person or by mail.
But those election officials have also quietly been preparing for another possibility: an onslaught of litigation that could flood the courts on Election Day and beyond.
"We are the biggest swing county in the biggest swing state, so we are very conscious of the fact that we have a lot of eyes on us," Bob Harvie, the Democratic vice chair of the Bucks County Board of Commissioners, said in an interview with ABC News.
Bucks County -- a suburb outside of Philadelphia that former President Donald Trump narrowly lost by less than a percentage point in 2016 and by about 5% in 2020 -- has been sued 11 times since the 2020 election, according to Harvie.
Now, Harvie said, they are "bracing" for a repeat.
They have re-engaged with their lawyers from 2020, Harvie said, and have made sure to document everything they are doing,
"If we're doing everything the right way, and we're documenting everything, then every lawsuit that comes our way -- frivolous as it may be -- will fail," Harvie said.
Already, a number of pre-election challenges have made their way to the Pennsylvania courts as part of an aggressive push by the Republican National Committee and the Trump campaign's "election integrity" program. This week the RNC brought its most sweeping challenge yet, asking the U.S. Supreme Court to block Pennsylvania voters from casting provisional ballots on Election Day if their mail-in-ballots were previously rejected due to a lack of a secrecy envelope -- a case they say has the potential to affect thousands of mail-in ballots in the critical state.
Josh Shapiro, the outspoken governor of the state who was under consideration to be Vice President Kamala Harris' running mate before she chose Tim Walz, recently said, "I do not have confidence" that Donald Trump won't question the results of the 2024 election.
"I will tell the good people of this commonwealth and this country, we're prepared for anything Donald Trump throws at us, and we're going to make sure the will of the people is protected," Shapiro said while appearing on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday. On Tuesday, Trump said at a press conference that there were "bad spots" in Pennsylvania, but that so far the election was "going very well."
One Shapiro aide told ABC News that their legal team has been preparing for the election and potential litigation since the "first day" Shapiro took office nearly two years ago.
"Our attorneys are ready to uphold Pennsylvania's Election Code and defend voters' rights," the aide said.
Pennsylvania saw a wave of litigation in the wake of the 2020 election, as part of Trump and his allies' effort to overturn his loss. Conspiracy theories circulated rampantly after the state didn't count enough votes on election night to determine the winner -- circumstances that were exacerbated by the large number of mail-in ballots due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Pennsylvania law dictates that election workers are not allowed to conduct what is called "pre-canvassing" of mail-in ballots -- the process of preparing mail-in ballots to be counted by opening them and removing the secrecy envelope -- until 7 a.m. on the day of the election. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonprofit think tank, this means that Pennsylvania, unlike other states, can't get a jump start on tabulating mail-in votes -- which helped contribute to the delay in 2020.
The state did not have final results in 2020 until the Saturday after Election Day -- and that law has not changed for the 2024 election. However, Shapiro said the state has made some changes to try to speed things up, which he believes will lead to faster results.
"We did make one concrete change since the last time we had a presidential race, and that is once the counties begin counting -- it's 7 a.m. on Election Day -- they can't stop, meaning they have to keep going," Shapiro said. "The last time, some of the counties stopped, went home, slept, had some, you know, water and food, and came back. This time, they've made plans to go all the way through, so I expect it'll be sooner than what we had last time.
For many, the specter of 2020 is still hanging over their heads as they enter the final sprint toward the 2024 election.
"I didn't see 2020, but my understanding is it shocked everyone with what was happening," said Colleen Frens, who took over as county solicitor in Chester County in 2021.
Chester County -- an area in the Philadelphia suburbs that the New York Times said is "increasingly critical to Democrats statewide" -- did not "take the brunt" of the legal challenges in 2020, Frens said, but the county still reached a point in recent years where election issues were consuming nearly all of its legal resources.
"We're sort of always waiting for the next shoe to drop. It's a tremendous use of financial and human resources," Frens said.
In all, the county has spent nearly half a million dollars since 2020 on election litigation, officials told ABC News.
Recently, they have formed relationships with outside lawyers, should they need them on election night, and have started a weekly meeting with neighboring counties to discuss what they're seeing on the ground and how they can share legal resources.
"We established more formal help so that when we need it, it's there, and we don't have to scramble," Frens said. "These are very important cases and you often only have 12 hours to draft a brief, so we have to pull in the resources of larger firms that have legal staff to help with that."
"We have to pay for it, but it works," she said.
