Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has been Secretary of State since 2018. Pacer shows that 49 lawsuits have been filed in federal court against him. Of course, when anyone alleges that an election law is unconstitutional, it is customary to sue the Secretary of State (assuming the Secretary in that state handles elections; in a few states there is a Secretary of State who is not involved with elections).
Not all of the 49 lawsuits necessarily involves elections, because Secretaries of State have duties not related to elections. BAN has not examined all 49 cases, but it is clear that the vast majority are election law cases. One wonders if any other Secretary of State has been the defendant in this many federal lawsuits.
At one time in Texas, the SOS tended to be the named plaintiff in election cases. More recently the practice has been to name the governor. I think this may be political.
The appellant in Bullock v Carter was SOS Bob Bullock who would go on to become become Comptroller (4 terms) and Lieutenant Governor (2 terms). This was an appeal of Carter v. Dies. Martin Dies, Jr. Was Bullock’s predecessor as SOS. Oddly, Van Phillip Carter was excluded from the case on procedural grounds.
American Party of Texas v Whiet was against SOS Mark Whiet, who would go on to become AG and Governor.
Mark Whiet was the appellant in Whiet v Weiser which established the 5% threshold for legislative district deviation.
Crawford Martin was SOS at the time of Bush v. Martin. The plaintiff was George HW Bush, later President. But for a couple of months timing, we would know ‘Wesberry v Sanders’ would be known as ‘Martin v Bush’.
Terrazas v. Slagle, is interesting because he was sued in his capacity as Democratic State Party Chair to prevent him from conducting the Democratic primary based on challenged districts. The Republican chair was also included, as was the SOS John Hannah who had ordered those districts to be used. Hannah as a federal district judge would preside over the next decade’s redistricting litigation.
The minor party lawsuit is styled ‘Miller v Doe’. Not only was the SOS unknown, their gender was also unknown. John or Joan Doe is sued. Texas is on its second SOS since the case was filed in 2019.
The Libertarian filing case is against Jose Esparza who was the acting SOS when the suit was filed, though John Scott has been substituted as defendant.
How many cases against Trump and his gang of gangsters ???
Richard: Did you look up how many lawsuits have been filed against any of the other Secretaries of State? Maybe Raffensperger has been sued a lot, but it would be helpful to get a baseline as to how often the other SOS’s have been sued too.