Kris William Kobach is an American lawyer and politician who has served as the attorney general of Kansas since 2023. He previously served as the 31st secretary of state of Kansas from 2011 to 2019.
Hans Anatol von Spakovsky is an American attorney and a former member of the Federal Election Commission (FEC). He is the manager of The Heritage Foundation's Election Law Reform Initiative and a senior legal fellow in The Heritage Foundation's Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. He is an advocate for stricter voting laws. He has been described as playing an influential role in making concern about voter fraud mainstream in the Republican Party.
John Christian Adams is an American attorney and conservative activist formerly employed by the United States Department of Justice under the George W. Bush administration. Since leaving the DOJ, Adams has become notable for making alarmist and false claims about the extent of voter fraud in the United States. He has falsely accused a number of legitimate voters of being fraudulent, and has published information about them online, including Social Security numbers.
Voter suppression in the United States consists of various legal and illegal efforts to prevent eligible citizens from exercising their right to vote. Such voter suppression efforts vary by state, local government, precinct, and election. Voter suppression has historically been used for racial, economic, gender, age and disability discrimination. After the American Civil War, all African-American men were granted voting rights, but poll taxes or language tests were used to limit and suppress the ability to register or cast a ballot. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 improved voting access. Since the beginning of voter suppression efforts, proponents of these laws have cited concerns over electoral integrity as a justification for various restrictions and requirements, while opponents argue that these constitute bad faith given the lack of voter fraud evidence in the United States.
Electoral fraud in the United States, also known as voter fraud, involves illegal voting in or manipulation of United States elections. Types of fraud include voter impersonation or in-person voter fraud, mail-in or absentee ballot fraud, illegal voting by noncitizens and double voting.
Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck was a database in the United States which aggregated voter registration records from multiple states to identify voters who may have registered or voted in two or more states. Crosscheck was developed in 2005 by Kansas Secretary of State Ron Thornburgh in conjunction with Iowa, Missouri, and Nebraska. In December 2019, the program was suspended indefinitely as part of a settlement of a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas challenging Kansas' management of the program. Prior to Crosscheck's legally mandated suspension, a dozen states had withdrawn from the program citing the inaccurate data and risk of violating voters' privacy rights. Crosscheck was also accused of facilitating unlawful purges of voters in a racially discriminatory manner.
The Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, also called the Voter Fraud Commission, was a Presidential Commission established by Donald Trump that ran from May 11, 2017, to January 3, 2018. The Trump administration said the commission would review claims of voter fraud, improper registration, and voter suppression. The establishment of the commission followed Trump's false claim that millions of illegal immigrants had voted in the 2016 presidential election, costing him the popular vote. Vice President Mike Pence was chosen as chair of the commission and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach was its vice chair and day-to-day administrator.
American Civil Liberties Union v. Trump and Pence, No. 1:17-cv-01351, is a case pending before the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. The plaintiffs, the watchdog group American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), alleges that the defendants, President Donald Trump and the Vice President Michael Pence, are in violation of the Federal Advisory Committee Act by establishing the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity for the purpose of supporting the President's "claim that he won the popular vote in the 2016 election—once millions of supposedly illegal votes are subtracted from the count."
NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc. v. Trump, No. 1:17-cv-05427-ALC, was a lawsuit filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. The plaintiffs, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, The Ordinary People Society, and a coalition of civil rights groups alleged that the defendants, President Donald Trump, the Vice President Michael Pence, and Kris Kobach were in violation of the Fifth and Fifteenth Amendments and the Federal Advisory Committee Act by establishing the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity (PEIC) for the purpose of intentionally discriminating against Black and Latino voters in violation of the Fifth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution and the Federal Advisory Committee Act.
The Presidential Memorandum on Military Service by Transgender Individuals, officially the Presidential Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Homeland Security, is the 27th presidential memorandum signed by U.S. President Donald Trump on August 25, 2017. The intent was to prevent transgender people from serving in the U.S. military, on the basis that they would be a financial burden due to sex reassignment procedures and associated costs. Federal courts delayed the implementation of this rule by issuing four injunctions. On January 22, 2019, however, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration's ban to take effect.
Jane Doe v. Trump (1:17-cv-01597-CKK) was a lawsuit filed on August 9, 2017, and decided January 4, 2019 in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. The suit sought to block Donald Trump and top Pentagon officials from implementing the proposed ban on military service for transgender people under the auspices of the equal protection and due process clauses of the Fifth Amendment. The court ruled that the Trump administration's policy should not be blocked. Nonetheless, the Trump administration's policy continued to be blocked due to three preliminary injunctions against it that were not part of this lawsuit and which remained in effect as of the lawsuit's conclusion on January 4, 2019.
Fish v. Kobach was a 2018 bench trial in the United States District Court for the District of Kansas in which five Kansas residents and the League of Women Voters contested the legality of the Documentary Proof of Citizenship (DPOC) requirement of the Kansas Secure and Fair Elections (SAFE) Act, which was enacted in 2011 and took effect in 2013.
The Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) is an American conservative legal group based in Alexandria, Virginia, which is known for suing states and local governments to purge voters from election rolls. The nonprofit was constituted in 2012.
Wolf v. Vidal, 591 U.S. ___ (2020), was a case that was filed to challenge the Trump Administration's rescission of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). Plaintiffs in the case are DACA recipients who argue that the rescission decision is unlawful under the Administrative Procedure Act and the Fifth Amendment. On February 13, 2018, Judge Garaufis in the Eastern District of New York addressed the question of whether the government offered a legally adequate reason for ending the DACA program. The court found that Defendants did not provide a legally adequate reason for ending the DACA program and that the decision to end DACA was arbitrary and capricious. Defendants have appealed the decision to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
After the 2020 United States presidential election, the campaign for incumbent President Donald Trump and others filed 62 lawsuits contesting election processes, vote counting, and the vote certification process in 9 states and the District of Columbia.
After Democrat Joe Biden won the 2020 United States presidential election, Republican nominee and then-incumbent president Donald Trump pursued an unprecedented effort to overturn the election, with support from his campaign, proxies, political allies, and many of his supporters. These efforts culminated in the January 6 Capitol attack by Trump supporters in an attempted self-coup d'état. Trump and his allies used the "big lie" propaganda technique to promote false claims and conspiracy theories asserting the election was stolen by means of rigged voting machines, electoral fraud and an international conspiracy. Trump pressed Department of Justice leaders to challenge the results and publicly state the election was corrupt. However, the attorney general, director of National Intelligence, and director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency – as well as some Trump campaign staff – dismissed these claims. State and federal judges, election officials, and state governors also determined the claims were baseless. Trump loyalists, including chief of staff Mark Meadows, personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, and several Republican lawmakers, attempted to keep Trump in power. At the state level, they targeted legislatures with the intent of changing the results or delaying electoral vote certification at the Capitol. Nationally, they promoted the idea Vice President Mike Pence could refuse to certify the results on January 6, 2021. Hundreds of elected Republicans, including members of Congress and governors, refused to acknowledge Biden's victory, though a growing number acknowledged it over time. Trump's legal team sought to bring a case before the Supreme Court, but none of the 63 lawsuits they filed were successful. They pinned their hopes on Texas v. Pennsylvania, but on December 11, 2020, the Supreme Court declined to hear the case. Afterward, Trump considered ways to remain in power, including military intervention, seizing voting machines, and another appeal to the Supreme Court.
The following is a timeline of major events before, during, and after the 2020 United States presidential election, the 59th quadrennial United States presidential election, from November 2020 to January 2021. For prior events, see Timeline of the 2020 United States presidential election (2017–2019) and Timeline of the 2020 United States presidential election.
The Donald Trump 2020 presidential campaign launched numerous lawsuits contesting the election processes of Michigan. All of these were either dismissed or dropped.
The Donald Trump 2020 presidential campaign launched numerous lawsuits contesting the election processes of Nevada. Many of the processes contested were created due to the COVID-19 pandemic. All of these were either dismissed or dropped.
Protect Democracy is a nonprofit organization based in the United States. A nonpartisan group, Protect Democracy seeks to check what it believes are authoritarian attacks on U.S. democracy.
