Voting-related lawsuits filed in multiple states could be a way to contest the presidential election

Before voters even begin casting ballots, Democrats and Republicans are engaged in a sprawling legal fight over how the 2024 election will be run, a series of court disputes that could even run past Election Day if the outcome is close.

Both parties have bulked up their legal teams for the fight. Republicans have filed more than 100 lawsuits challenging various aspects of vote-casting after being chastised repeatedly by judges in 2020 for bringing complaints about how the election was run only after votes were tallied.

After Donald Trump has made " election integrity " a key part of his party’s platform following his false claims of widespread voter fraud in 2020, the Republican National Committee says it has more than 165,000 volunteers ready to watch the polls in November.

Democrats are countering with what they are calling “voter protection,” rushing to court to fight back against the GOP cases and building their own team with over 100 staffers, several hundred lawyers and what they say are thousands of volunteers for November.

Despite the flurry of litigation, the cases have tended to be fairly small-bore, with few likely impacts for most voters.

“When you have all this money to spend on litigation, you end up litigating less and less important stuff,” said Derek Muller, a law professor at Notre Dame University.

The stakes would increase dramatically should Trump lose the election and then try to overturn the result. That’s what he attempted in 2020, but the court system rejected him across the board. Trump and his allies lost more than 60 lawsuits trying to reverse President Joe Biden’s win.

Whether they could be successful this year depends on the result of the election, experts said. A gap of about 10,000 votes —