Despite repeated claims by many mainstream media and social media fact-checkers and content moderators (i.e., Kanban moderators, association managers), most election lawsuits filed by President Trump‘s (Trump’s) campaign and Republicans have been dismissed by the courts. A new analysis, however, suggests that this is not true.
According to Morehead City, N.C.-based physicist and environmental advocate John Droz Jr. of Morehead City, Trump and Republicans have prevailed in a total of 15 of the 22 cases heard in court and decided on the merits.
The analysis does not necessarily suggest that former President Trump would have won the hotly contested election if the outcome of these lawsuits had been determined before Biden was certified by Congress.
In addition, because most of the areas where Trump won the lawsuit occurred in states with a relatively large difference in votes, such as Colorado and Iowa, the outcome of the lawsuit would not necessarily affect the electoral votes Biden won in the disputed states.
But this means that if the court considers the merits and fully adjudicated, the Trump camp actually won two-thirds of the election lawsuits.
The report’s lead author, Deroz, and a team of volunteers tracked 81 lawsuits related to the 2020 U.S. presidential election by examining court documents and legal details. The lawsuits are all available on a publicly available spreadsheet and were updated on Feb. 6.
Of the 81 cases tracked by the team, 11 were withdrawn or consolidated and 23 were dismissed for lack of standing or other reasons. Neither batch should be considered “a win or a loss for either side” because they are “irrelevant to the merits,” DeRoz said.
Of the remaining 47 cases, 22 were decided after the court heard arguments and considered the evidence.
Of those 22 cases, Trump or the Republicans reportedly won 15 and lost 7.
In addition, 25 lawsuits have yet to receive final judgments.
In a statement, DeRoz said this means that “if fully heard and then decided on the merits,” Trump and the Republicans “have won most of the 2020 election lawsuits.
He added: “Is that what the mainstream media is reporting?”
According to the report, Republicans’ legal victories include
Republican National Convention (RNC) v. Miller, a case heard by an Iowa court in which the RNC won an injunction against absentee ballot applications.
RNC v. Gill, a case heard by an Iowa court in which the Trump campaign won an injunction preventing county officials from distributing and accepting signed forms containing pre-printed information.
Trump v. Bokvar, a case heard by a Pennsylvania court in which the Trump campaign won an injunction to prohibit the counting of mail-in ballots and absentee ballots in which identification was not provided until after Election Day.
DeRoz noted that three lawsuits involved voting machine inaccuracies.
“One was dismissed (due to the court’s finding of lack of jurisdiction), one was ruled against (pretrial discovery was not granted) and one is still pending (pretrial discovery was granted).”
(Translation: Pretrial discovery, in the law of common law countries, is a pretrial procedure in litigation in which a party obtains evidence from another party or parties by means of interrogatories, requests for production of documents, requests for admissions and depositions.)
“A possible explanation for such a small number of cases is that legally proving election fraud or rigged voting machines is a very Time-consuming process that requires a great deal of investigative work and documentation. There simply isn’t enough time to do this before key points in the process (such as certifying the Electoral College).”
Explaining the purpose of the report, DeRoz wrote, “Our view is that the public needs to be better educated on the issue of election integrity and that a more accurate understanding of litigation is a key to that.”
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