# 2020 presidential-election litigation: what was filed, what was won, and who decided it **Research status:** working source memo, last checked 2026-08-23. This is not a public story and should not be converted into one without checking every locator and updating the post-2024 docket status noted below. ## Bottom line The most defensible compact answer is **64 proceedings in the six decisive battleground states; one narrow, non-outcome-changing favorable result in the report's broad Trump-and-supporters universe; 29 merits defeats; 20 dismissals before a merits hearing; and 14 voluntary dismissals.** Put another way: - **49 adjudicated defeats** (29 after a merits hearing and 20 before one); - **14 abandoned/withdrawn proceedings** (not judicial “losses,” although they produced no relief); - **one favorable result**, involving **270 Pennsylvania provisional ballots in a state-senate contest**, not a Trump-campaign win or a ruling that Trump won Pennsylvania or the presidency. Thus “Trump went 1–63” is acceptable only as shorthand for *one favorable result and 63 proceedings that produced no favorable result*. It is not an accurate description of 63 judicial rulings. “Judges refused to hear the evidence,” however, is also false: **30 of the 64 proceedings included a hearing on the merits**, and only the 270-ballot Pennsylvania matter produced a favorable result. No case in this reconstructed universe established enough unlawful or miscounted presidential votes to change a state's certified result. The January 6 Select Committee likewise reported that state and federal courts rejected every *outcome-determinative* post-election suit filed by Trump and his allies. See the [official final report, ch. 1, pp. 210–12](https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-J6-REPORT/pdf/GPO-J6-REPORT-2-1.pdf). ## What exactly is being counted There is no official clerk-of-courts category called a “Trump 2020 election case.” Counts differ because researchers make different choices about plaintiffs, dates, states, appeals, pre-election procedure suits, recounts, and cases that sought no outcome-changing relief. A number without a defined universe is rhetoric, not an audit. This memo uses the reproducible universe in **Lost, Not Stolen**, a 2022 review by Republican and conservative lawyers and former officials. Its addenda identify each matter and disposition. The universe is: 1. proceedings brought by Trump, his campaign, or supporters; 2. challenging the 2020 presidential result or the way presidential ballots were administered; 3. in **Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin**; 4. includes both pre-election administration challenges and post-election result challenges, with related appellate proceedings generally grouped into the same matter; and 5. counted as **64 proceedings containing 187 claims/counts**. The [full report and state-by-state addenda](https://lostnotstolen.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Lost-Not-Stolen-The-Conservative-Case-that-Trump-Lost-and-Biden-Won-the-2020-Presidential-Election-July-2022.pdf) state the methodology and the 20/14/30 breakdown at pp. 1–4. I reproduced the arithmetic from the stated disposition buckets and spot-checked the consequential entries against the underlying orders listed below. This is therefore a reconstruction of a disclosed 64-case ledger, **not** a claim that 64 is the only possible count. Excluded from this number are Texas v. Pennsylvania (an original Supreme Court action outside a single battleground state's courts), generalized 2020 voting-access litigation initiated before the election, criminal cases, legislative hearings, audits, defamation suits, and later attorney- discipline or sanctions proceedings. Some larger “60/61/62/64” lists include one or more of those; some count an appeal as a new case while this ledger generally treats it as part of the originating matter. ### Disposition ledger | Disposition | Proceedings | What it means | |---|---:|---| | Merits hearing; Trump side lost | 29 | The court considered the substantive claim/evidence and denied outcome-changing relief. | | Dismissed before merits hearing | 20 | Standing, jurisdiction, laches, mootness, pleading, or another threshold defect prevented a full merits hearing. Some orders also explained that the claim would fail on the merits. | | Voluntarily dismissed | 14 | Plaintiffs abandoned the matter; this is not a judicial merits finding. | | Trump-side win | 1 | A Pennsylvania intermediate appellate ruling excluded 270 provisional ballots in a state-senate contest; immaterial to the presidential result. | | **Total** | **64** | **One favorable result; no outcome-changing presidential victory.** | The winning entry is *In re Allegheny County Provisional Ballots*, GD 20-011793 / 1161 C.D. 2020 / 338 WAL 2020. The Commonwealth Court excluded 270 deficient provisional ballots; the Pennsylvania Supreme Court denied review. The ballots were connected to a state-senate candidate, not proof that presidential totals were fraudulent. See *Lost, Not Stolen*, Pennsylvania Addendum A, pp. 62–63, which gives the docket identifiers needed to retrieve the state orders. The report also describes two other Pennsylvania orders granting provisional relief. In *Hamm v. Boockvar*, a court ordered Election-Day provisional ballots tied to timely received mail ballots segregated pending individual validity decisions. In *Donald J. Trump for President v. Boockvar*, a court ordered ballots tied to a disputed voter-identification deadline segregated and later barred the segregated votes from counting. The report's executive summary nevertheless says Trump and his supporters “prevail[ed]” in only one of the 64 cases. This ledger follows that disclosed case-level final-disposition tally while preserving the two other provisional orders; it does not recast them as presidential-result victories or pretend they did not occur. ## “Procedural” does not mean “the evidence was secretly valid” A court must have authority to hear a plaintiff, the plaintiff must sue the proper parties, plead a legally cognizable injury, and seek relief the court can grant. Those are constitutional and rule-of-law requirements, not an escape hatch invented for 2020. Delay mattered too: a litigant cannot knowingly wait until after losing and then seek to invalidate rules under which everyone already voted. More importantly, several courts addressed both threshold defects and the evidentiary weakness: - In *Bowyer v. Ducey*, the federal court found the Arizona allegations largely based on anonymous witnesses, hearsay, and irrelevant material and described them as “void of plausible allegations.” See 506 F. Supp. 3d 699, 721–23 (D. Ariz. 2020), docket 2:20-cv-02321. - In *Ward v. Jackson*, an Arizona trial court held an evidentiary hearing and found no fraud, misconduct, or illegal votes sufficient to affect the result; the Arizona Supreme Court affirmed. See CV 2020-015285 and CV-20-0343-AP/EL, summarized with primary-order citations in the report's Arizona Addendum A. - In *Law v. Whitmer*, Nevada's First Judicial District Court heard the election contest and found plaintiffs had not proved that illegal votes were counted, legal votes excluded, or fraud affected the result. See Case No. 20 OC 00163 1B and the Nevada Supreme Court's unanimous affirmance. - In *Trump v. Wisconsin Elections Commission*, Judge Brett Ludwig held that Trump had a trial on the merits and lost because the challenged guidance was consistent with authority granted by the legislature. Read the [official district-court opinion](https://www.wied.uscourts.gov/sites/wied/files/documents/opinions/20-CV-1785%20Donald%20J.%20Trump%20v.%20The%20Wisconsin%20Elections%20Commission%2C%20et%20al%20%28134%29.pdf). - In *Donald J. Trump for President v. Boockvar*, the Third Circuit said that charges require specific allegations and proof and that the campaign had neither. Read the [official Third Circuit opinion](https://www2.ca3.uscourts.gov/opinarch/203371np.pdf). The accurate formulation is therefore: **some cases ended on threshold rules, some were withdrawn, and many received substantive review; none established an outcome-changing presidential fraud.** ## What the judges' appointing presidents do—and do not—show Appointment is a useful test of the claim that Democratic judges uniformly protected Biden. It is not a legitimate substitute for reading an opinion, and state judges are often elected or selected by systems that do not map onto presidential appointment. The official January 6 report counted **22 federal judges appointed by Republican presidents** among the judges who heard the post-election cases. It specifically noted the Trump-authored Third Circuit opinion in *Boockvar* and the all-Republican-appointed Seventh Circuit panel affirming the Wisconsin loss. See [ch. 1, pp. 210–12 and nn. 131–37](https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-J6-REPORT/pdf/GPO-J6-REPORT-2-1.pdf). The partial federal roster contains **nine identified Trump-appointed Article III judges** among 31 unique judges across 14 grouped proceedings. It is not an exhaustive roster for all 64 proceedings. Eight participated in adverse outcome-related rulings: trial judges Steven Grimberg, J. Nicholas Ranjan, and Brett Ludwig; and appellate judges Barbara Lagoa, Andrew Brasher, Britt Grant, Stephanos Bibas, and Michael Scudder. R. Stan Baker entered only a routine case-management order before plaintiffs voluntarily dismissed their matter; he did not reject their evidence. These roles were not interchangeable. Ranjan and Ludwig issued merits decisions; Grimberg combined threshold and alternative analysis; the appellate judges participated in merits, standing, or jurisdictional rulings. The full [35-judge reconciliation](2020-election-judge-roster.md) records the counting rules, official opinions, Federal Judicial Center biographies, grouped-appeal limits, and the correction of two prior panel-identification errors. ### Did Democratic-appointed judges give Trump his wins? **No—not in this 64-proceeding ledger.** The sole favorable final disposition was in Pennsylvania state court, whose judges are elected under Pennsylvania's system, not appointed by a Democratic president. No Democratic-president-appointed federal judge produced an outcome-changing Trump-side victory, and no court of any appointment provenance ruled that Trump won a battleground state. This answer needs a scope warning: litigants sometimes won incidental scheduling, observation, discovery, or ballot-segregation orders. Counting every interim motion as a “case win” would inflate both sides' totals and is not the question voters usually mean when asking whether the challenges proved the election result wrong. ## Mike Lindell / MyPillow: a different legal ledger Lindell's later cases must not be added to the 64 election-result proceedings. They are principally defamation, deceptive-trade-practices, arbitration, discovery, and sanctions matters. A defamation court asks whether particular statements were false and actionable and, where required, made with actual malice; it is not conducting a statewide election contest. Primary judicial records nevertheless bear directly on the credibility of specific Lindell claims: - In *US Dominion, Inc. v. My Pillow, Inc.*, No. 1:21-cv-00445 (D.D.C.), the court denied Lindell and MyPillow's effort to dismiss Dominion's defamation claim, holding that Dominion had adequately pleaded provably false factual assertions and actual malice. That was a pleading ruling, **not a final trial finding that every Dominion allegation was proved**. See [D.D.C. Doc. 54 (2021)](https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/district-of-columbia/dcdce/1%3A2021cv00445/227759/54/). - The same court later rejected Lindell/MyPillow counterclaims against Dominion and Smartmatic. See [D.D.C. Doc. 135 (2022)](https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/district-of-columbia/dcdce/1%3A2021cv00445/227759/135/). - In *Coomer v. Lindell*, No. 1:22-cv-01129 (D. Colo.), the court's [summary-judgment order](https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/colorado/codce/1%3A2022cv01129/215068/261/) sent actionable statements to trial; a 2025 jury later found two Lindell statements defamatory and awarded $2.3 million. The verdict concerns statements about Eric Coomer, not a judicial recount of the presidential vote. Post-trial motions and appeal status require a fresh docket check before publication. - In *Smartmatic USA Corp. v. Lindell*, No. 0:22-cv-00098 (D. Minn.), the court initially held the complaint adequately pleaded actionable factual statements and potential MyPillow liability. See [Doc. 52 (2022)](https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/minnesota/mndce/0%3A2022cv00098/198368/52/) and [Doc. 160 (2023)](https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/minnesota/mndce/0%3A2022cv00098/198368/160/). The public-facing point should be modest and exact: **Lindell's claims did not produce a successful election-result case; when particular accusations later entered defamation litigation, courts treated them as testable factual claims, not immune political opinion.** Do not say that every Lindell claim has been finally adjudicated, or that a defamation verdict itself “proves the election.” ## Unresolved audit items before publication 1. Export all 64 addendum rows into structured data and attach the underlying final order for each; several state-court document links have migrated. 2. Decide a single appeal-counting rule. The 64-case report groups many appeals with trial matters, while judge-count claims often count appellate panel participation separately. 3. Complete the unique-judge roster, distinguishing trial judge, appellate panelist, magistrate judge, and justice; verify appointment data in the Federal Judicial Center or the relevant state judiciary. 4. Reconcile the one favorable Pennsylvania disposition against any later ballot treatment and state certification record. Its 270 ballots were mathematically immaterial either way. 5. Refresh PACER/CourtListener dockets for Dominion, Smartmatic, and Coomer before stating present status; those cases continued well after the election-contest period. 6. Keep “fraud” counts separate from statutory election-administration claims. In Pennsylvania, for example, Trump's lawyers often alleged unequal administration or technical violations rather than pleading a statewide fraud claim. ## Recommended public wording > Trump and his allies used the courts. In one transparent 64-proceeding review covering the six > decisive states, 30 reached a merits hearing: 29 ended adversely, and the sole favorable result > concerned 270 Pennsylvania provisional ballots in a state-senate contest—far too few to affect > the presidency. Twenty more proceedings were dismissed on threshold rules, and plaintiffs > withdrew 14. Republican-appointed judges, including judges Trump himself appointed, rejected > central claims. No court found enough fraud or illegal votes to change a state's result. That wording is direct, numerically honest, and does not pretend that a withdrawal is a judicial merits ruling.