Trump v. Raffensperger

Donald Trump, in this lawsuit, alleges widespread invalid and illegal votes, including 2,560 cast by ineligible felons, 66,247 from underage voters, 2,423 from unregistered voters, 4,926 from voters who had moved out of state, 395 double-votes, 15,700 voters who filed a national change of address with the Post Office, 40,279 voters who crossed county lines, 1,043 voters who used a P.O. Box as their habitation, 98 individuals who registered to vote after the last day to register in order to be eligible to participate in the Nov 3rd, 2020, Presidential election, and 10,315 individuals who were listed as deceased (8,718 of whom were listed as having died prior to the date on the State records as the date they cast their vote).

As relief for these extraordinary claims, Trump requested that the election be rendered null and void, decertification of all election results in Georgia, prohibition of Georgia's presidential electors from being appointed, and/or to operate a new election in the 10 days before the electoral votes were to be certified.

The opposition in the case said, "The deficiencies of the Petition are numerous, as among other things, the claims are barred by Georgia’s contest statute itself, the doctrine of laches, raises claims that have already been thoroughly rejected by other courts, fails to state cognizable claims, and is contradicted by elementary constitutional doctrine."

How could these two sides differ so extremely in their judgement of what the facts show? Because they're both partly right. These claims are based on searching databases of voters for names that are also listed in other databases, such as the national change of address registry. They accurately describe the number of votes implicated by what they've found. But this evidence falls short in a crucial respect: different people can have the same name. Out of 5,000,000 votes cast, it is not unreasonable to expect that 150,000 of those voters share a name with someone else in the country. That's only one pair of people who share a name for every 70 voters.

Trump's side ultimately withdrew their petition for a preliminary injunction, objected to the assignment of Judge Constance Russell to the case, and appealed to the Georgia Supreme Court. The Georgia Supreme Court unanimously ruled that their court was authorized to overturn court orders, but not voluntary withdrawals of preliminary injunctions and not final decisions in cases where no final decision had not yet been issued. Since they lacked jurisdiction, they declined to take the appeal.

Trump's side then withdrew the rest of the case, claiming that it was superseded by a settlement. The respondents objected to the claim that a settlement had been reached, writing "There is no settlement." One of the respondents then filed motion to force Trump's side to pay all sides' court costs, in the amount of $10,875.00, which the petitioners eventually paid.