The legal fight is on…if needed. Republicans and Democratic lawyers are on stand-by. Worried that there will be a 2000 election battle, democratic lawyers went to a Tallahassee court Monday morning, telling a judge that they feared Republicans planned wide-scale voter challenges.

Filing a lawsuit last week in Leon County, the Republicans are being accused of challenging 300 voters in Glades County. In Florida, since a law has passed allowing anyone the ability to submit a list of voters with questionable addresses to supervisors of elections throughout the state, those folks can be barred from voting.

With a pre-emptive challenge under their belt, Democrats feel better protected. According to Chuck Lichtman, statewide counsel of the Florida Democratic Lawyers Council, “Republicans plan to challenge voters throughout the state in an attempt to suppress voters.”

However, a lawyer for the Republican Party of Florida and a partner at Greenberg Traurig in Tallahassee said in an interview: “There is no plan to challenge voters.”

“It ain’t going to happen.”

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Campaigns are over and so are the mean-spirited campaign ads, however, the court cases that followed are still pushing forward. According to The National Law Journal, “negative campaign ads triggered several defamation lawsuits nationwide, with candidates crying foul and some lawyers saying enough is enough.”

Republican Senator Norm Coleman is one example of someone pushing for a lawsuit, this go around against Al Franken over TV and radio ads that allegedly contained lies about him. With ads that said Coleman was “the fourth most corrupt senator in Washington,” Coleman wasn’t happy! Now, a recount has been ordered in the Coleman-Franken race. Oh boy!

In North Carolina, Democrat Kay Hagan is suing Republican opponent, Senator Elizabeth Dole, over a TV ad that accused her of having ties to an antheist, political action committee.

Florida’s John Dicks, a congressional candidate who lost in the Democratic primary is suing his opponent because his opponent “falsely portrayed him as being responsible for an investor losing thousands of dollars in a bad investment.”

While I believe ad-bashing is the name of the game and you shouldn’t play if you can’t take the heat, lawyers are advising their clients to strike back.

“If people don’t strike back, it’s going to have a real deterrent effect on people running for office. They need to call them out on these things,” said attorney Thomas C. Chase, a solo practitioner in Fort Myers, Fla. who is representing Dicks in his defamation suit. “It’s people focusing on trash talk instead of qualifications.”

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