Republicans filed more than two-thirds of all “anti-voting” lawsuits in 2023, according to a new report released Thursday by the progressive media platform Democracy Docket.

Democracy Docket has tracked election-related litigation since 2020, and the report details all of the democracy and election-related lawsuits the group followed in 2023.

“Between filing its own lawsuits and intervening — or attempting to intervene — in existing lawsuits, the GOP has had a hand in over a third of all the democracy-related lawsuits filed in 2023,” the report concludes.

In the new report obtained by The Messenger, of the 22 voting-related lawsuits brought forth in 2023 that Democracy Docket tracked, 15 were brought by Republicans, or 68% — an increase of roughly 15% compared to 2022.

“Aside from filing its own proactive anti-voting lawsuits, the GOP and its affiliates asked for permission to intervene on 15 separate occasions in 10 pro-voting lawsuits filed in 2023,” the report noted. “By intervening in lawsuits, the GOP aimed to defend various voter suppression laws enacted by GOP-controlled legislatures in states across the county.”

The report defines a lawsuit as “anti-voting” if it "aims to suppress voting through tactics such as tightening the rules around voter registration, adding more obstacles to mail-in or in-person voting processes and more.”

The report goes on to cite examples in Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and Wisconsin, where “the Republican National Committee and local Republican parties asked to intervene in lawsuits posing challenges to anti-voting laws and practices that restrict mail-in voting, add strict photo ID requirements and make voter registration more difficult.”

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Additionally, one of the states that saw the most election-related lawsuits was Arizona, the group found.

“In Arizona — a state that has rapidly developed into a hotbed for election denialism — there were multiple lawsuits brought by right-wing officials and activists seeking to decertify the state’s 2022 election results,” the report stated.

In 2022, Democracy Docket tracked 40 post-election lawsuits. In 2023, the group only tracked six, though “none of the post-election lawsuits filed this past year concerned elections held in 2023. Rather, nearly all of the post-election lawsuits filed in 2023 originated from the fringe, right-wing election deniers in Arizona and Texas who continued to challenge the results of races held in 2022,” the report said.

Behind Arizona were Florida and Mississippi, though those two states saw “primarily pro-voting litigation in 2023.” In Florida, three lawsuits challenged the state’s “latest omnibus voter suppression law,” while in Mississippi, two lawsuits challenged “the Republican-controlled Legislature’s anti-democratic ploy to seize power from the state’s majority-Black capital city of Jackson,” the report said.

Although, according to the report, Republicans were behind the majority of lawsuits seeking to tighten voting conditions, overall, the group saw more pro-voting cases than anti-voting cases. The report also said there was a “distinct shift in who was behind new democracy-related litigation, with pro-voting parties bringing the bulk of all new lawsuits in 2023.”

This was explained by it being an off-year, the group said, and much of the litigation focused on “pro-voting challenges to new voter suppression laws,” which were enacted largely by Republican-controlled legislatures, the report said.

Additionally, the majority of “pro-voting” lawsuits filed in 2023 were not brought by partisans, according to the report, but “were brought by nonpartisan groups, including civic and voting rights organizations and nonprofits.”

“Despite not being a federal election year, 2023 nevertheless saw over 70 democracy-related lawsuits spanning dozens of states,” the report reads. “By comparison, in 2021 — another off-cycle year — Democracy Docket tracked 57 new democracy-related lawsuits across 18 states.”

Although the number of new lawsuits was less than in 2022, a midterm election year, the group said it anticipates the number of new litigation to increase in 2024, as it's a presidential election year.

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Report: Republicans Filed More Than Two-Thirds of All ‘Anti-Voting’ Lawsuits in 2023: (Exclusive)