Eighteen years after the 2000 election was litigated into a win for George W. Bush, the shadow of that historic race has prompted Georgia’s Democratic and Republican parties once again to marshal legal teams.

As early as 2002, Atlanta attorney Randy Evans (now U.S. ambassador to Luxembourg) and Stefan Passantino (who recently left his job as deputy White House counsel to join former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus’ law firm) organized teams of Republican lawyers to be ready to litigate close races. The teams they put in place each election cycle also represented GOP interests in legal wrangling over the availability and validity of ballots, precinct operations, vote counting and other issues arising from the state’s election laws.