The Biden campaign is filing an amicus brief Monday to support Nevada’s secretary of state in a lawsuit the Republican National Committee brought against the state over alleged inaccuracies in the voter rolls.

As the RNC narrows in on Nevada, between the March lawsuit and one brought with the Trump campaign and the Nevada GOP in May challenging the period of time that the state allows mail ballots to be received after Election Day, the Biden campaign is trying to lay its own legal groundwork. Its lawyers are arguing that, beyond that the faulty argument they say the Republicans have made, the lawsuits are an attempt to sow doubt in the election months before it happens.

"This lawsuit is little more than political theater, designed less to address any real (much less substantial) issue with Nevada’s voter registration lists, than to sow public distrust in the security and integrity of our electoral systems,” the brief says. “It is no more than a continuation of Republicans’ 2020 efforts to undermine public confidence in our elections."

[Read more about the RNC’s recent lawsuit here.]

In 2020, the GOP filed more than 60 lawsuits attempting to challenge the results of the election in pivotal states where then-candidate Joe Biden beat then-President Donald Trump. All but one were defeated, cementing the fairness of the 2020 election. In Nevada, none prevailed, and the state’s Republican then-secretary of state concluded there was no evidence of widespread election fraud.

This cycle, the RNC and its allies, including the Nevada GOP, have begun the legal battle earlier, in Nevada and other swing states. In the March lawsuit, the RNC accused the state of violating voter law through improper roll maintenance, claiming that the number of voters on the rolls exceeded the eligible voting age population in several counties.

In a statement, an RNC spokesperson did not respond to allegations that the lawsuits are part of a broader plan to undermine confidence in the election, and defended the voter roll lawsuit as a necessary step.

“Nevada’s voter rolls are inaccurate — full stop,” the spokesperson said. “It speaks volumes that Democrats are laser-focused on stopping voter roll cleanup instead of solving any of the crises that have erupted on their watch.”

The secretary of state’s office filed a motion to dismiss the suit; replies are due May 20.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada and the Campaign Legal Center also announced Monday they will file amicus briefs in the case supporting the secretary of state.

The Biden campaign’s amicus brief backs up the Nevada secretary of state’s arguments in defense of the voter roll system but goes further, suggesting that the GOP is bringing flawed lawsuits in order to refer back to them if Trump loses in his rematch with Biden this year and convince voters before the election occurs that it will be unfair. 

In the brief, the Biden campaign reiterates points from the Nevada secretary of state’s filings, which fault the RNC for misinterpreting the National Voter Registration Act, the bill that governs how voter rolls must be maintained, and the differing pools of data that the secretary of state alleged the RNC pulled from to claim that the voter rolls were inflated.

"These circumstances make clear that this lawsuit is not meant to protect the integrity of upcoming elections, but instead to provide the RNC with ammunition to undermine the general election’s results,” the brief says. “Indeed, former President Trump is already asserting interference with the 2024 general election, months before a single vote has been cast or counted."

In recent interviews, Trump has not committed to accepting the results of the election if he loses and said “it depends” on the fairness of the election as to whether there will be political violence afterwards.

The goal of the brief, according to the campaign, is to ask the judge to dismiss the case swiftly, as the secretary of state has requested, as well as to identify for the court what they believe is the RNC’s ultimate goal of undermining confidence in the election. Doing so, the campaign hopes, will dissuade judges from hearing this and similar cases.

“Our team is prepared and continuing the fight for democracy,” Charles Lutvak, a national spokesperson for Biden’s campaign, said in a statement. “We are defending the right to free and fair elections against Republicans’ junk lawsuits.”