The 2020 election cycle has been like one never before with a pandemic, civil unrest, and an unprecedented expansion of voting by-mail. RNLA Vice President Audrey Perry Martin argues in a recent article for The Daily Signal that there is a lot to learn from this year to make our election system stronger moving forward.

The Trump Campaign has announced has announced litigation in Georgia, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. They will also be pursuing a recount in Wisconsin.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent changes in state election laws, the 2020 election cycle has been highly litigious, to say the least. Over 325 lawsuits have been filed since the primary election season alone. As the Heritage Foundation's Hans von Spakovsky told the Daily Caller: "Almost all of them have been filed by the progressive left and their allies in the Democratic Party."

In the most striking moment of last night’s Vice Presidential Debate, Senator Kamala Harris refused to answer on court packing. But first, let us briefly address Senator Harris' citing of President Lincoln not filling a Supreme Court vacancy 27 days before an election.

This afternoon, President Trump announced 20 additional distinguished attorneys and judges to the list of nominees he would consider for any future Supreme Court vacancy.  Polling showed that then-candidate Trump's list in 2016 was important to many voters who supported him, and he kept his promise of choosing off the list when he nominated Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh to the Court.  Further, President Trump selected from his list for many of his highly qualified nominees to lower federal courts during his first term, providing unprecedented transparency regarding judicial nominations from a presidential candidate.

By contrast, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has not released a list, nor has he indicated that he will release one, leaving voters to wonder whom he would consider for any Supreme Court vacancy.  Would a President Biden choose off the troubling Demand Justice list or the secret Alliance for Justice list?  Both possibilities should terrify any American who values the rule of law.

Yesterday, presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden announced that he selected California Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate.  While the mainstream media has dubbed her a centrist, her record suggests otherwise.

The DC Board of Elections held a special meeting today to allow for public comment regarding its plan to mail ballots to every voter and to have only 40 polling locations open throughout DC for the November election – over 100 fewer polling locations than it usually has during an election.  The RNLA submitted a comment in opposition to the Board's plan due to its potential to disenfranchise voters. 

On Tuesday, June 3rd, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties held a hearing on elections just one day after primaries in 8 states and the District of Columbia were fraught with difficulties due to unrest over the death of George Floyd and the COVID-19 pandemic.

It is not an optimal situation but let’s be real, context and the rule of law matter. Honest liberals and even Joe Biden give qualified agreement for holding the Wisconsin elections today.  Yet this is a bit extreme but typical of the reaction on the left.  

There are many problems with the left's reaction. First, keep in mind what Democrat Presidential frontrunner Joe Biden stated:

“There’s a lot of things that can be done; that’s for the Wisconsin courts and folks to decide,” former Vice President Joe Biden said last Thursday in a virtual press briefing, in which he insisted that in-person and mail-in voting could both be done safely—even though he considers the possibility of a national convention in the state to be a potential risk to public health.

As states likely expand the use of mail ballots in response to the COVID-19 breakout, they need to also protect the integrity of mail ballots to prevent both the appearance of impropriety and actual fraud this November.  Lawyers Democracy Fund published a study last year by current Republican federal Election Assistance Commission(EAC) Commissioner Don Palmer (before he joined the EAC), describing some of the steps needed to protect the integrity of mail ballots and improve voter confidence in mail voting: