Voting defamation suit seeks to widen net, accuses GOP attorneys of conspiracy

Those attorneys, the lawsuit argues, helped North Carolina voters challenge Democratic votes "to delay certification of the election and suggest that voter fraud affected the election results."

Attorneys with the firm accused, Holtzman Vogel Josefiak Torchinsky, did not return messages seeking comment Friday. Dallas Woodhouse, executive director of the North Carolina Republican Party, called the lawsuit "a disgusting intimidation effort" meant to dissuade people from filing reasonable challenges.

Challenges that individual voters voted twice or otherwise voted illegally may not always prove correct, Woodhouse said, but people should be able to file protests and call for investigations without being certain.

"The system's not perfect, it will never be perfect, but it's got to have checks," he said. "And this is one."

The lawsuit was first filed in February. The move to expand it comes after attorneys on the case interviewed a Guilford County man who filed protests and who had been the lawsuit's only named defendant. Based on that interview and other evidence, lawyers with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice say they have enough to back conspiracy accusations against the wider group.

"Plaintiffs believe that these entities and individuals were responsible for facilitating a statewide scheme to invalidate the results of the 2016 gubernatorial election, and maliciously or recklessly defamed voters across the state to achieve that end," the filing states.

A judge will have to sign off on adding the new defendants and decide whether the lawsuit morphs into a class-action case.

The attorneys named as potential new defendants in a filing earlier this month are: Steven Roberts, Erin Clark, Gabriella Fallon and Steven Saxe. Each works for Holtzman Vogel, and each was involved in submitting protests after last year's elections, the filing states.

Holtzman Vogel is a well-known firm with a focus on election and campaign law, and it has deep Republican ties. McCrory's legal defense fund, which plaintiffs also want added to the suit, paid the firm nearly $87,000 last year in the two months following the gubernatorial election, campaign finance records show.

The Southern Coalition for Social Justice is a left-leaning group funded by a number of entities, including the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation. It has brought a number of lawsuits against North Carolina election laws in recent years, including ongoing lawsuits challenging Republican-drawn election maps.