Donald Trump plans to suppress the vote, undermine the legitimacy of the election, and scream fraud if he loses. Joe Biden is ready to fight back.
The Biden campaign is building a major election protection program, which former White House counsel Bob Bauer, a member of the Biden team, told The New York Times would be “far more sophisticated and resourced” than similar efforts on recent Democratic campaigns.
The effort, led by Bauer and Biden campaign counsel Dana Remus, includes two former solicitors general, Donald Verrilli Jr. and Walter Dellinger, as well as a Marc Elias-led team of lawyers at the firm Perkins Coie, with former Attorney General Eric Holder helping communicate with independent groups already fighting voter suppression in the courts.
The Biden campaign will need that legal firepower. Trump’s own words are the loudest and most visible part of the Republican election-rigging effort—from his constant lying about fraud to suggesting his supporters should commit fraud by trying to vote twice to his hints that he might not honor the result of the election—but they’re just the tip of the Republican iceberg. There’s the sabotage of the U.S. Postal Service. The extensive efforts to make it more difficult to vote during a pandemic. The purges. Even a longtime top Republican election lawyer is appalled.
All of this happens, too, as the Republican Party can, for the first time in decades, campaign against “voter fraud” without court oversight. In response to its new freedom, the party is planning a massive voter intimidation effort.
In past years, Democratic campaigns haven’t always been ready for the dirty tricks Republicans would employ. The Biden campaign isn’t making that mistake.
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