Conservative justices appeared ready to strike down so-called “grace periods” for election officials to count mail-in ballots after Election Day.
Signaling a threat to millions of voters who cast mail-in ballots across the country and overseas, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority appeared ready Monday to bless a recent push by Republicans to restrict how and when late-arriving mail-in ballots are counted.
The Republican National Committee, and Mississippi’s Republican and Libertarian parties have asked justices to unwind a Mississippi law passed in 2020 that allowed absentee voters to mail in their ballots with a postmark as late as Election Day. Under the state law, election officials were ordered to count ballots received as late as five days after Election Day. (Over 30 states currently have grace period rules for mail-in ballots that are similar.)
Paul Clement, the attorney representing the Republican National Committee, told the justices that all ballots, including mail-in ballots, must be received “into official custody” and counted by Election Day or be invalidated.
Seemingly suddenly disinterested in preserving states’ rights, Justices Neal Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas, Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh repeatedly appeared to share the RNC’s sentiments about the necessity of a singular Election Day —or one without grace periods for the counting of ballots. Justice Samuel Alito appeared to put a fine point on the majority’s grievances.
It’s so weird and fucked up that he’s making this an argument against allowing postmarked ballots, which allow someone to wait until election day in case there are surprise scandals. He seems to think someone being able to recall a vote for someone who’s revealed to be unfit would be bad.
But instead of this hypothetical where a scandal comes out after polls close and some small number of people are able cancel votes sent from far away, he wants people to lock in their vote well before election day so that they can’t vote with the information available right up to the end like in person voters. And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the next case he’ll be decrying early voting for doing just that.
The voter that gets in line at the last possible second has an unfair advantage over the voter that was there when the polls opened. Clearly we must mandate that everyone votes at the exact same time.
Eh, election cycles in US last years.
I don’t think US voters need to wait until the day-of to know about the candidates. They know at least 1 year in advance.