The U.S. Supreme Court, faced with sagging public confidence and a deepening perception its decisions are politically-motivated, could soon play a critical role in how some 2024 presidential ballots are cast and counted and, potentially, how contested election results are certified.
“As prepared as anyone can be,” said Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the court’s junior justice, when asked recently about the flood of election-related lawsuits headed toward the high court.
Hundreds of state and federal cases involving disputes over the legitimacy of state voter rolls, access to voting places, and procedures for counting ballots are currently pending. A majority of them were brought by Republicans.
“It is a deluge,” said Wendy Weiser, director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan think tank tracking the unprecedented volume of election-year litigation. “It is a strategy to sow disinformation and chaos in the election system.”
Many of the lawsuits, predicated on “conspiracy theories” and advancing tenuous legal arguments, will ultimately be tossed out on technical grounds, Weiser said. But some may reach the justices with the potential to alter voting procedures in the final weeks of the campaign, depending on how they rule.