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Donald Trump once said, “My whole life is about winning. I don’t lose often. I almost never lose.” and that mindset has led him to win by any means necessary. President Trump’s obsession with losing the 2020 presidential election has pushed him and the Republican National Committee into making questionable decisions. The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF), has sued the RNC based on those actions and their violation of the Voting Rights Act and the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act.
The new lawsuit reads:
Defendants’ efforts to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters – targeting cities with large Black populations, including Detroit, Michigan, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Atlanta, Georgia – repeat the worst abuses in our nation’s history, where Black Americans were denied a voice in American democracy for most of the first two centuries of the Republic.
The NAACP filed the lawsuit last month on behalf of the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization and a group of Black Michigan voters, accusing the Trump campaign of violating the Voting Rights Act. The amended lawsuit added the Republican National Committee as a defendant in the case and the Ku Klux Klan Act allegations.
The complaint accuses the campaign and the RNC of violating the 1871 law’s prohibition against “preventing by force, intimidation, or threat, any citizen who is lawfully entitled to vote, from giving his support or advocacy in a legal manner, toward or in favor of the election of any lawfully qualified person as an elector for President or Vice President.”
The Trump campaign and its allies have filed a flurry of lawsuits seeking to decertify the election results in key battleground states. The main issue which puts these fruitless lawsuits in direct violation of the Ku Klux Klan Act and the VRA is that “Defendants have not directed these efforts at predominantly white areas… [and] have largely been directed at major metropolitan areas with large Black voter populations”. Trump and the RNC has the right to legally contest the election, the means by which they are doing so is what the NAACP states is illegal.
Trump’s lawsuits are not based on fact and rely on conspiracies as their support. In a Pennsylvania case, Trump’s personal lawyer and loyalist Rudy Giuliani alleged “widespread, nationwide voter fraud” in his opening remarks. But under questioning from the judge, he retreated and admitted, “This is not a fraud case.” No substantial fraud has been uncovered in the election, yet Trump continues to tweet unfounded allegations. This misinformation has led to intimidation of poll workers, the accosting of ballot counters, and death threats to elected officials.
“By targeting communities of color with false claims of voter fraud, and by coordinating actions to pressure state and local officials to discard votes cast in cities with large Black populations, President Trump, his campaign, and the RNC, have undermined our most sacred constitutional values,” said Sam Spital, LDF’s Director of Litigation. “With this suit, we seek to vindicate our clients’ rights and prevent future attacks on the fabric of our democracy.
