Which 2024 post-election lawsuits alleged fraud and who filed them?
Executive summary
A diverse set of post‑election lawsuits filed after the 2024 general election alleged fraud or irregularities: locally focused challenges such as the Rockland County case brought by SMART Legislation; statewide and national Republican‑led suits contesting mail‑ballot processing, voter rolls and absentee procedures; and a host of additional cases catalogued by tracking projects that show broad partisan litigation activity [1] [2] [3] [4]. Courts and observers have noted that while many complaints raised alarm about fraud, most did not present evidence likely to overturn certified outcomes and some resembled earlier, largely unsuccessful post‑2020 challenges [1] [5] [6].
1. The Rockland County lawsuit: a localized fraud claim led by SMART Legislation
SMART Legislation — the action arm of the nonprofit SMART Elections — filed a complaint alleging voting discrepancies in Rockland County, New York, including sworn voter affidavits asserting that votes for independent Senate candidate Diane Sare were not reflected in certified tallies and raising questions about voting machines and “drop‑off” inconsistencies between presidential and Senate tallies; a New York judge allowed discovery to proceed, though the litigation is not expected to change certified statewide or federal outcomes [7] [8] [1] [6] [9].
2. Republican national and state party litigation alleging ballot‑processing or noncitizen voting problems
The Republican National Committee and state GOP organizations filed multiple post‑election suits alleging problems ranging from wrongly dated or undated mail ballots in Pennsylvania (a King’s Bench petition against 67 county boards) to challenges over absentee‑ballot verification and other procedures in battleground states; these actions were part of coordinated, high‑volume litigation by Republican entities that the cycle’s trackers show materially increased compared with 2020 [2] [10] [4].
3. High‑profile state cases alleging noncitizen registrations and vote‑purge failures
In Nevada and other states, Republican campaigns and party organizations pressed suits alleging that secretaries of state or election officials failed to purge noncitizen registrants — claims that sought to tie DMV records to active voter rolls and identified thousands of “positive matches” in complaints filed by Republican actors; these cases were among those that raised questions about the integrity of voter rolls in key states [10].
4. Pattern and scale: many suits, few that threaten certified results
Ballotpedia and other trackers recorded more than a hundred election‑related lawsuits in 2024, spanning 33 states and involving candidates, parties and advocacy groups; analysts at Just Security and State Court Report observed that many of these filings echoed 2020‑era claims — pressing allegations of fraud or ineligible voting that courts have often found unsupported — and that none of the pending cases appeared poised to broadly upend vote‑count procedures or outcomes [3] [5] [11].
5. Motives, framing and competing narratives
Advocates who filed these suits argued they sought transparency and verification, pointing to affidavits, statistical anomalies and alleged procedural violations as the basis for discovery or recounts; critics and many courts viewed several filings as politically motivated attempts to delay certification or sow doubt, a pattern documented by analysts who linked the surge in litigation to partisan strategy rather than to newly persuasive evidence of systemic fraud [9] [5] [4].
6. Legal posture and likely effects
Judges have in some instances allowed discovery — as in the Rockland matter — while repeatedly noting that litigants must meet evidentiary thresholds to obtain remedies such as recounts or decertification; both legal observers and reporting stressed that discovery or litigation does not equate to a judicial finding of fraud, and that most suits will not alter certified presidential or Senate results absent substantial, admissible proof [6] [1] [5].
7. Where reporting leaves gaps
Public trackers and news coverage enumerate plaintiffs (SMART Legislation, RNC, state GOPs, individual campaigns and candidates) and identify core allegations (ballot dating, absentee verification, noncitizen registrations, machine irregularities), but the sources provided do not comprehensively list every post‑election fraud allegation filed nationwide nor do they include the final adjudicative outcomes for many pending suits; those details would require case‑by‑case court‑docket review beyond the cited reporting [3] [2] [10].