Courts Prep for Resource, Security Challenges in Election Cases

Courts in battleground states are preparing to combat potential security threats and expand resources to field an expected influx of election litigation.

That has courts in states like Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Nevada announcing plans to speed up election-related cases, making sure every judge is on-call, or creating new social media accounts to get out accurate information.

Their efforts come amid increased threats against judges and other public officials and concerns about efforts both domestically and abroad to undermine trust in election rulings.

“Elections are hard on the judiciary because the public is thinking, everything’s political, everything,” and that the “courts must be too,” Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Nathan Hecht said. “We’re supposed to be the independent that people can come to with election problems and feel like they’re going to get treated fairly.”

Hecht warned at an event last month about Russian disinformation campaigns targeting the courts. He said in an interview that he was briefed on this issue by Homeland Security officials about five years ago.

Measures Underway

Courts are already receiving election-related challenges ahead of Nov. 5 related to issues like absentee voting and voter registration requirements. A Bloomberg News analysis identified at least 165 lawsuits filed in 37 states since 2023 related to the upcoming presidential election.

Cases filed so far include challenges in Georgia state court to a move by the state’s Republican-led election board to mandate hand counting of ballots and a Wisconsin state court lawsuit over use of ballot drop boxes.Both Pennsylvania federal and state courts have also handled litigation over misdated or undated ballots.

The decline in public confidence in the system following the 2020 presidential election—a change fueled in part by former President Donald Trump’s unproven election fraud allegations—has since translated to more litigation, said Rebecca Green, who co-directs the Election Law Program at William & Mary Law School.

“A lot of times election litigation is like lightning: you don’t know where it’s going to strike or what might go wrong,” Green said.

Beginning with last presidential cycle, the federal trial court in Nevada changed its Election Day staffing procedures to have all judges be on-call to handle any election-related emergency requests that crop up, said Judge Miranda Du, the most recent chief judge.

“For an election, it’s just even that much more urgent, especially if a motion is filed close to the Election Day, or during the day of the election,” Du said. “If an issue comes up, obviously if you won’t address it on a timely basis, you’re basically denying relief.”

An Arizona state trial court extended Election Day hours, while the state’s top appellate court instructed judges to prioritize election-related matters. Pennsylvania’s supreme court temporarily shortened appellate deadlines for election law cases, and Michigan’s state supreme court distributed guidance to parties filing emergency motions about who at the court to notify.

The Pennsylvania state court system also announced this month a new page on social media platform Bluesky, as part of its effort to “push out court information, including election related matters as widely and quickly as possible,” according to a court spokesperson.

Judicial Security

The anticipated election cases come amid rising public distrust in the judiciary and more threats against judges, heightening security challenges for the judges assigned to high-profile disputes.

Threats against federal judges have more than doubled since 2019, ahead of the last presidential election, according to the US Marshals Service.

Foreign and domestic entities including Russia, have sought for years to exploit public distrust in the judiciary by targeting it in cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns, said Suzanne Spaulding, a former Obama-era Homeland Security Department official who’s now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“If I were Putin and I wanted to undermine trust in democracy, and exacerbate division, the courts are a pretty tempting target,” she said, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Trump, who is facing criminal charges for election obstruction and other offenses, has publicly criticized judges hearing his cases. Two of them have been victims of “swatting” incidents, in which an emergency is falsely reported at a residence to draw a high police presence.

“We are all aware that the landscape has changed in terms of election-related suits, and our court will be prepared to handle whatever comes our way,” said Chief Judge James Boasberg of the Washington federal trial court.

Judge Richard Sullivan, chair of the Judicial Conference’s security panel, said he believes judges are better prepared to handle threats and attacks than they were five years ago.

Sullivan said officials from the federal courts, Justice Department, and the Marshals Service talk regularly about judicial security.

Programs to help judges delete personally identifying information from the internet and get reimbursements for home security systems have also been implemented since the 2020 presidential election and the murder of a New Jersey federal judge’s son by a disgruntled attorney that same year.

“There’s more mindfulness of this now, but it’s not a huge sea change in what we’re doing,” Sullivan said. “I think we’ve become more sophisticated.”