Judges reject RNC lawsuits challenging some overseas ballots in Michigan and North Carolina

By Tierney Sneed and Marshall Cohen, CNN

(CNN) — Judges in Michigan and North Carolina rejected lawsuits brought by the Republican National Committee and others that challenged overseas ballots cast by voters abroad who never resided in the states.

The rulings in two separate cases on Monday are setbacks in efforts by Republicans to target the overseas vote, which has long seen as sacrosanct because of its tie to the military but now could be a crucial bloc for Democrats as the pool of civilian expats overseas now eclipses military voters serving outside the country.

Former President Donald Trump and his GOP allies have heralded the cases as essential to securing the integrity of the 2024 election – but their arguments fell flat in court. The Michigan judge called the lawsuit an “attempt to disenfranchise” voters, and the North Carolina judge said Republicans “presented no substantial evidence” of the fraud they claimed they were trying to prevent.

The RNC sued in Michigan and North Carolina to block state policies that allow for citizens abroad to cast ballots in those states if their parents (or, in Michigan, their spouse) resided in those states before leaving the country, even if the voters themselves never lived there.

Judge Sima Patel of Michigan’s Court of Claims said in her ruling that Republicans were too late in filing their lawsuit, calling it “11th hour attempt to disenfranchise” spouses and children of former Michigan residents who now live abroad.

In North Carolina, Wake County Superior Court Judge John W. Smith denied the RNC’s request for an emergency court order that would require election officials to set aside ballots from overseas voters who hadn’t themselves lived in the state.

Smith said that the RNC was challenging voting policies that were passed with bipartisan support by the North Carolina legislature and that the Republicans “have presented no substantial evidence of any instance where the harm that plaintiffs seek to prevent has ever ‘fraudulently’ occurred.”

CNN has reached out to the RNC and election officials in Michigan and North Carolina for comment. DNC spokesperson Alex Floyd said in a statement that the GOP-backed litigation “was nothing more than a transparent ploy to threaten the voting rights of military families and try to sow chaos in this election for cynical political ends.”

And Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign used the rulings to accuse Republicans of “pulling out all the stops to block your vote,” in a statement Tuesday morning.

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, who oversees the state’s elections and was sued by the RNC, hailed Patel’s court ruling as “a win for voters and democracy today in Michigan!” In a social media post, Benson, a second-term Democrat, touted the judge’s conclusion that the GOP was trying to “disenfranchise” some voters.

In Michigan and North Carolina, the policy of accepting ballots from those overseas voters have been on the books for several years. But starting in 2016, civilian voters abroad began outnumbering the military vote overseas – which itself is not as conservative as it once was. Democrats announced earlier this cycle a six-figure investment into turning out eligible Democrats abroad, particularly those who can vote in battleground states.

Michigan Republicans cited the reports of that turnout effort in their court filings in their challenge there.

Still, Patel noted in her ruling that the RNC’s Michigan lawsuit was filed just a few weeks before Election Day and well after the federal deadline for states to transmit ballots to overseas voters.

“It would be extremely difficult or impossible for defendants to design and carry out a program to reject potentially thousands of [absent voter ballots] at this time,” Patel wrote, while noting the “myriad tasks in the final days leading up to a general election” that election officials currently face.

“It is hard to imagine a more prejudicial situation arising from plaintiffs’ delay,” she wrote.

Patel was also not convinced by Republicans’ arguments that voter residency requirements in the Michigan Constitution preclude the state law that allows overseas citizens who had never lived in Michigan to vote there if they had a sufficient family tie. The judge embraced the arguments put forward by election officials defending the policy, who asserted that Michigan’s Constitution also gave the legislature the power to expand the pool of eligible voters.

Michigan officials said last week that they have received about 16,000 requests for overseas ballots. This is a tiny slice of the electorate – there are 8.4 million registered voters in the state, and more than 5.5 million Michiganders voted in the 2020 election.

This story has been updated with additional details and reaction.

CNN’s Devan Cole contributed to this report.

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