The People and Groups Who Tried to Disenfranchise Voters in 2024

There’s a reason why the 2024 election was the most litigated in history, even before Election Day arrived. There was a lot at stake and, because of that, Republican leaders and special interest groups fought tooth and nail to try and disenfranchise as many voters as they could before one of the most consequential elections in recent history. Throughout this year, Democracy Docket exposed and dug into some of the more egregious people and groups behind anti-voting litigation and other legal efforts to purge voters, gain access to voter rolls and overall tried to make it harder for more people to vote.

Democracy Docket exposed a cortège of GOP officials and conservative leaders with close ties to President-elect Donald Trump, meaning their recent efforts to thwart democracy and disenfranchise voters will likely continue in the new administration. 

Harmeet Dhillon

Over the past few years, Harmeet Dhillon — a conservative lawyer and the Republican national committeewoman from California — has become a fixture in Trump’s GOP, appearing on Fox News to rail against Democrats, cancel culture and the “woke” liberal agenda and representing the likes of Tucker Carlson, Andy Ngo and other far-right personalities in headline-seeking free speech lawsuits.

But it’s her work as an attorney — in 2006 she founded the Dhillon Law Group — that landed her on Democracy Docket’s radar this year. Her namesake law firm has become one of the leading legal groups working to roll back voting rights across the country. In the past few years, Dhillon — or an attorney from her law firm — has been involved in at least 16 different lawsuits in eight states and Washington, D.C. challenging voting rights laws, redistricting, election processes or Trump’s efforts to appear on the ballot in the 2024 election, according to our case database.

Public Interest Legal Foundation

Over the past few election cycles, the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) emerged as one of the most prolific right-wing groups leading the legal assault on voting rights. Since its founding in 2012, the conservative legal group has become synonymous with suing state and local governments to purge registered voters from their election rolls, barring noncitizens from voting and defending voter suppression laws. But the basis for its legal arguments typically pedal disinformation about mass election fraud. 

That was on full display during the ‘23-’24 election cycle, wherein the group was involved in at least eight voting lawsuits, including ones that tried to purge voters and access voter rolls. 

And while PILF’s grand claims of mass voter fraud get dismissed when no evidence turns up, the group succeeds in promoting disinformation in the courts and in the media, sowing doubt in the election process. That’s by design: behind PILF’s attack on voting rights is a well-funded conservative legal machine that gets most of its money from a network of right-wing dark money groups with a rich history of trying to suppress the right to vote.

Arizona Free Enterprise Club

Few states saw as much legal action in 2024 as Arizona, which had a surge of anti-voting lawsuits in the months leading up to the election. One nascent group behind a handful of lawsuits was the Arizona Free Enterprise Club (AFEC), a relatively unknown conservative advocacy group that describes itself as the “leading organization in the state dedicated to advancing a pro-growth, limited government agenda in Arizona.”

Since its founding in 2005, the AFEC has mostly directed its resources toward promoting right-wing economic causes in Arizona— lobbying for tax cuts and other economic incentives for private enterprise growth — but in the past year the group has diverted its resources to a different cause: Arizona’s elections. 

Since March 2023, the AFEC has filed several high-profile lawsuits seeking to thwart various aspects of how voting and elections are run in Arizona. What’s curious about these lawsuits isn’t what they’re challenging — as a key swing state, Arizona is frequently targeted by anti-voting conservative groups and figures — but that a nearly 20-year-old organization that, until last year, has seldom involved itself in Arizona’s voting laws has filed three high-profile election lawsuits in a single year.

United Sovereign Americans

Of the various right-wing groups who tried to have millions of voters purged before the November election, United Sovereign Americans (USA) led one of the most versatile efforts. The group mounted a longshot legal effort to dispute voter rolls throughout the country with eight  lawsuits in eight states. 

But USA complemented its legal strategy with something more insidious and dangerous: building a grassroots movement of volunteers radicalized to believe there’s mass fraud in the elections system — and training them to confront officials on how they administer elections. In such a charged political climate for election workers, there was warranted concern that USA’s efforts could have contributed to an already heightened risk of political violence during the election.

Judicial Watch

Judicial Watch is a self-described “conservative, non-partisan educational foundation, which promotes transparency, accountability and integrity in government, politics and the law.” But what that translates to in practice is, essentially, a right-wing legal group that’s constantly filing all manner of litigation against the government — Freedom of Information Act lawsuits, challenges to immigration policy, attempts to thwart environmental actions and any other issue that riles up Republicans. “Judicial Watch’s strategy is simple: Carpet-bomb the federal courts with Freedom of Information Act lawsuits,” the New York Times wrote of the organization in a 2016 profile. 

In the Trump era, Judicial Watch and its president, Tom Fitton, have amplified their efforts on attacking voting rights, filing a myriad of lawsuits across the country in an attempt to purge voter rolls and roil the elections process in a handful of battleground states. Though Judicial Watch’s litigation efforts to restrict the right to vote had little meaningful success in recent years, the group nonetheless continued their efforts, with at least three election-related lawsuits this past election cycle.

America First Legal

When Stephen Miller, a senior advisor during Trump’s first term and his incoming deputy chief of staff for policy, left the White House in 2021, he founded the conservative legal organization America First Legal (AFL). The group’s founding promise was to wage a legal war against all things progressive, and it has since filed dozens of legal actions against “woke corporations,” civil rights, LGBTQ rights, abortion rights and just about any other cause championed by the left. 

But suing corporations, colleges and other organizations over “woke” policies is just part and parcel of AFL’s large-scale, well-funded legal operation. Apart from the buzzy lawsuits inspired by the latest right-wing bogeymen, Miller and his legal team have launched an all-out assault against President Joe Biden, suing the administration over its border and immigration policies, economic initiatives and Second Amendment restrictions. More recently, and more concerning, AFL set their sights on disenfranchising voters — with five lawsuits in Arizona and Pennsylvania filed since 2022.

America First Policy Institute

Like AFL, America First Policy Institute (AFPI) is a conservative think tank founded in 2021 by a handful of prominent Republicans with ties to Trump. Although AFPI’s work spans the spectrum of right-wing policies and issues — like promoting free enterprise, immigration policy, foreign policy and other policies championed by the Trump administration — the group ratched up their involvement in voting-related lawsuits this year, with litigation efforts in Arizona, Georgia and Texas.