How many 2020 post‑election lawsuits were dismissed for lack of standing or timeliness?

1. The scale of post‑2020 litigation: dozens of suits, many short‑lived

After the 2020 election, challengers filed a wave of litigation — described in the supplied reporting as "over 60" lawsuits — aimed at overturning or contesting results in multiple states, a litigation footprint large enough to prompt repeated judicial rulings about threshold doctrines like standing and timeliness ^[1]. Multiple outlets summarized that a significant portion of those suits never reached merits adjudication because courts disposed of them at the threshold, underscoring that procedural defenses were the primary mechanism by which courts narrowed the post‑election docket ^{[1] [2]}.

2. Standing was a recurrent gatekeeper in election cases

Several of the cited pieces emphasize that federal courts routinely dismissed election challenges for lack of Article III standing, requiring plaintiffs to show individualized, concrete injury before reaching substantive claims; courts applied that doctrine to dismiss challenges by private plaintiffs and even some candidate suits at lower levels ^{[3] [2] [4]}. Advocacy and legal observers warned that relaxing standing could open the floodgates to pre‑ and post‑election litigation, which helps explain why judges were vigilant about applying standing doctrine during the 2020 aftermath ^{[4] [1]}.

3. Timeliness — laches and election‑timing rules — also cut cases off

Beyond standing, courts repeatedly rejected challenges as untimely when plaintiffs waited until after the election to bring claims that could have been raised earlier, invoking equitable doctrines and practical concerns about disrupting certified results; reporters quoted judges and legal analysts noting that many suits were dismissed for being raised too late to provide a remedy without chaos ^{[2] [4]}. That emphasis on timeliness complements standing as a tool courts used to avoid entangling themselves in disputed outcomes once votes had been cast and counted ^[2].

4. High‑profile examples illustrate the pattern but don’t yield totals

Notable examples in the supplied reporting include federal courts dismissing candidate challenges for lack of standing and lower courts rejecting various post‑election claims without reaching the merits; the Supreme Court’s later decisions about candidate standing (Bost) and related rulings complicate the picture by changing law in ways that might have produced different outcomes had they been available in 2020, but the reports themselves do not retroactively tally dismissed suits by doctrine ^{[3] [5] [6]}. The Democracy Docket piece explicitly states “many were dismissed quickly for lack of standing” but does not convert that into a precise count ^[1].

5. Why the precise count is missing from available reporting

None of the supplied sources provides a comprehensive dataset enumerating which of the roughly 60+ post‑2020 suits were dismissed specifically for lack of standing or timeliness, and contemporary summaries tend to describe the pattern rather than catalogue every dismissal with its doctrinal basis ^{[1] [2]}. That lacuna reflects both the decentralized nature of election litigation — spread across state and federal courts — and reporting choices to emphasize legal themes and high‑profile rulings rather than produce an exhaustive empirical inventory ^{[4] [1]}.

6. Bottom line and what would be needed for an exact figure

The most defensible conclusion from the available reporting is that a substantial portion of the more than 60 post‑2020 lawsuits were dismissed on procedural grounds such as standing and timeliness, but a precise numeric answer cannot be supported by the provided sources; arriving at a firm count would require a comprehensive case‑by‑case docket review or an authoritative compilation by a research organization or court database not included here ^{[1] [2]}.