A pair of former political rivals is teaming up again to fight against President Donald Trump’s effort to impose federal control over state election functions ahead of the midterms.
The Bipartisan American Election Project is the latest effort by Ben Ginsberg and Bob Bauer to advocate for the nonpartisan administration of elections and push back on federal encroachment over an area delegated by the Constitution to the states.
Ginsberg has represented the Republican National Committee and served as legal counsel on the presidential campaigns of George W. Bush and Mitt Romney. Bauer has represented the Democratic National Committee and served as former President Barack Obama’s White House counsel.
The pair came together to study election administration in the U.S. more than a decade ago as co-chairs of the Presidential Commission on Election Administration, which called for elections to be treated as a matter of nonpartisan “public administration.” Since then, they have worked on efforts to build public trust in elections and provide free legal help to election workers.
“The challenge to proper election administration has never been greater,” Ginsberg told POLITICO on Monday. “The purpose of this project is because of the onslaught that courts have been under in a variety of unique cases challenging many of the bipartisan constitutional principles and the traditional ways of administering elections.”
The group’s first action, filing amicus briefs in two ongoing legal fights over the Trump administration’s efforts to obtain state voter rolls, aims to provide a counterargument to the Justice Department’s assertions that the federal government needs to play a larger role in election administration.
“The Constitution divides power between the state and federal governments to secure Americans’ liberty,” they write in briefs filed in lawsuits brought by the Justice Department against Georgia and Massachusetts.
Trump has called for Republicans to “nationalize the voting” and continues to assert claims of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
Whether the federal government can demand copies of state voter rolls is a question that seems destined to be answered by the Supreme Court, Ginsberg and Bauer say. But they say the Justice Department’s lawsuits against 29 states and the District of Columbia are creating confusion during a midterm election year.
“While the resolution of this case eventually may be down the road, the immediate impact is significant,” Bauer said. “Which is why it’s really important for the views, which we hope will ultimately prevail, to be put as forcefully to the courts as possible.”
Ginsberg and Bauer are joined in their effort by several other notable names in election law. Former Biden campaign lawyer and White House counsel Dana Remus is participating as a board member, along with former Obama Solicitor General Donald Verrilli and Biden-Harris lawyer John Devaney. Prominent Republican litigator Michael Carvin and former George W. Bush administration official Daniel Troy will serve a senior advisory group.
The BAEP is initially focused on the voter roll lawsuits, but Ginsberg and Bauer anticipate growing their team and being involved on the state and local level.
“There’s a lot going on around the country that does not dominate the headlines quite the way Department of Justice litigation does,” Bauer said.
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