I have written this piece for the Monkey Cage over at the Washington Post. A snippet:

I have been tracking election-related litigation brought across the country since 1996. That was four years before Bush v. Gore, in which the Supreme Court halted litigation over Florida’s vote recount in the 2000 election, thereby putting George W. Bush in the White House. These lawsuits range widely, including fights over which candidates can get listed on the ballot; disputes over campaign finance rules; and arguments over the legality of lines drawn to define congressional districts.

In my 2012 book, “The Voting Wars,” I noted that we have seen twice the amount of election litigation on average in each of the years after 2000 compared with the average amount of litigation in each of the years from 1996 through 1999.

I recently updated my research for my new book, “Election Meltdown: Dirty Tricks, Distrust, and the Threat to American Democracy.” As you can see in the figure below, U.S. election lawsuits each year have nearly tripled since the end of 1999, from an average of 94 cases per year before Bush v. Gore to an average of 270 cases after. Election litigation was up 23 percent in 2016 compared with 2012. The midterm elections of 2018 saw 394 cases — the most at least since 1996, and likely ever.