COVID-Related Election Litigation Tracker

Case Details

This database consolidates and tracks litigation concerning the effect of the pandemic on election law. The purpose of this tool is to provide an interactive list of relevant cases that can be searched by issue, court, status, and jurisdiction.

Case Details

 

Republican National Committee v. Weipert

Closed

Republican National Committee v. Weipert, No. 06521 CVCV081957 (Iowa Dist. Ct., Johnson Cnty.)

  Case Summary The Trump campaign and the RNC sued the Johnson County auditor who sent voters absentee ballot applications prepopulated with some of their voter information, in contravention of the guidance of the Iowa Secretary of State. This is in light of a law passed this summer that would have required county officials to reach out to individual voters to cure ballot issues rather than looking them up in their own database, creating delays and confusion. The plaintiffs ask that the auditor be enjoined from using the prepopulated forms (many of which have already been sent to voters) and contact voters and inform them that the forms can no longer be used.
Filed 08/10/2020
State Iowa
Type of Court State
Status Closed
Last Updated 03/13/2021
Issue Tag(s) Vote-by-Mail (Signature Verification Standards, Claim that Mail Voting Leads to Fraud and/or Vote Dilution, Other Vote-by-Mail Issue)
Pre-population of Absentee Ballots with voter's name, DOB, pin, and other info.
Complaint(s) 08/10/2020: Complaint filed.
Dispositive Ruling(s) 09/12/2020: Order/Ruling, The court held that the Johnson County auditor did not have the authority, in light of the Secretary of State's Directive, to send pre-filled absentee ballot request forms, and the RNC and Trump campaign would be irreparably harmed if those forms (many already sent, filled out, and sent back) were counted. The Johnson County auditor is required to contact each voter who submitted the form and tell them that the form is null and void.
Creative Commons License  Covid-Related Election Litigation Tracker by the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project – Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.