Mississippi has—effectively, had—a legislation that required the state to rely absentee ballots acquired as much as 5 days after Election Day in the event that they have been postmarked earlier than or on the day of the election. The state made that change to its election legal guidelines throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, they usually stored it on the books.
Should you’re not brain-poisoned with right-wing propaganda about stolen elections, a legislation like this simply is smart. The particular person nonetheless has to have solid a poll by Election Day. This fashion, their vote gained’t be invalidated simply because the US Postal Service is one way or the other incapable of getting ballots to election facilities inside the three-to-five-day vary they promise. Eighteen states—plus Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and Washington, D.C.—have legal guidelines like this.
Today, Republicans who’ve marinated within the Trump fever swamp of voter fraud allegations hate legal guidelines like this. They’re dedicated to their worldview that mail-in ballots are ripe for fraud as a result of that’s what Trump thinks, regardless of proof exhibiting that voter fraud resembling double voting is vanishingly small.
So, again to Mississippi. In early 2024, the Republican Nationwide Committee sued the state, saying that the counting of late-arriving ballots was preempted by federal statutes that require all votes to reach by Election Day. Mississippi is an odd selection for Republicans to show their voter fraud suspicions on, given Trump took 57% of the vote in each 2016 and 2020. However by suing in Mississippi, they have been assured to get their enchantment in entrance of a Fifth Circuit panel in the event that they misplaced on the decrease court docket.
The Fifth Circuit is probably the most conservative appellate court docket within the nation. Of the 17 judges at present on the court docket, Trump appointed six of them. Solely 5 of these 17 have been appointed by a Democratic president.
The Fifth Circuit has given us such bangers as: Bump Shares are Nice, Truly and the Occupational Well being and Security Administration Can’t Implement Office Security Guidelines As a result of COVID-19 is No Large Deal. The court docket is so off the rails that even the conservative majority at the US Supreme Court docket has began ruling towards them repeatedly.
A person walks in entrance of the fifth U.S. Circuit Court docket of Appeals.
Getting repeatedly smacked down by the Supreme Court docket doesn’t appear to have cowed the Fifth Circuit in any respect. So why wouldn’t they, a mere eight days earlier than the election, problem a choice that might wreak havoc in a number of states? And why wouldn’t they fully upend the inherent proper of states—not the federal authorities—to resolve the right way to administer elections?
In ruling that Mississippi can’t make its personal legal guidelines about absentee ballots, the Fifth Circuit wasn’t truly fascinated by meddling in Mississippi’s 2024 election as such as a result of there’s no query that the state will go for Trump. That’s why the choice remanded the case again to the decrease court docket with out issuing an injunction that will have blocked the state from accepting late-arriving ballots in 2024. Fairly, that is all a few far-right push to declare that Election Day is a singular day and restrict voting to in-person on that day.
In 2020, Democrats voted by mail at double the speed of Republicans. Early voting information for 2024 reveals Republicans pulling almost even, little question due to the GOP making an enormous mail-in voting push even whereas Trump runs round crying fraud about it. MAGA varieties gained’t be completely happy till they’ve lower off all of the methods wherein voting may very well be made extra accessible.
However first, they should wrench the regulation of voting away from the states. The federal courts are stuffed to the gills with Federalist Society conservatives, and Republicans very a lot would reasonably have these judges accountable for elections than enable states to make their very own guidelines. To do this, they should flip the regulation of elections on its head.
As a lot as they’re alleged to be the states’ rights social gathering, the GOP has very a lot embraced the notion that the federal courts get a veto over state election procedures at any time when it fits them. It’s been a profitable technique for the precise going again to Bush v. Gore, the place the court docket’s conservative majority handed the election to George W. Bush by stopping Florida from utilizing its personal legal guidelines to recount votes.
U.S. Supreme Court docket Chief Justice John Roberts
On condition that three GOP veterans of the Bush v. Gore battle now sit on the Supreme Court docket, why not lay the groundwork for that court docket to present GOP candidates a serving to hand? Chief Justice John Roberts prepped the legal professional who argued Bush v. Gore earlier than the court docket, and Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett each labored on the Bush authorized workforce.
Final time period, in a choice that regrettably not one of the liberal justices dissented from, the Supreme Court docket invalidated Colorado’s elimination of Trump from the poll. In doing so, the court docket overruled the Colorado Supreme Court docket, basically telling states that they can’t implement their legal guidelines relating to poll entry. So, a state isn’t allowed to kick Trump off the poll even when the state decided he was an insurrectionist and subsequently not eligible.
Because of the Fifth Circuit, Republicans now have a choice in hand that claims that federal legislation preempts state legislation on the subject of when absentee ballots might be counted. There’s no method to learn the choice with out concluding that if the Supreme Court docket agreed with it, it will invalidate each state legislation that permits late-arriving votes to be counted, even when they have been postmarked by Election Day. Whereas the Fifth Circuit resolution could not have an effect on Mississippi for 2024, there’s no telling what the GOP will do with this late-October reward.
The social gathering has been attacking mail-in votes throughout the nation this election cycle. Nevada, a prized swing state, requires that ballots acquired as much as 4 days after the election be counted if postmarked on Election Day. Nevada isn’t a part of the Fifth Circuit—it’s within the Ninth—but when Trump leads the state narrowly on Election Day, it appears virtually inevitable that the GOP would trot out the Fifth Circuit resolution within the hopes that one other federal court docket would chunk.
And if that problem makes all of it the way in which to the Supreme Court docket? It is going to discover the nice and cozy embrace of three Bush v. Gore alumni. And there’s additionally Clarence Thomas, whose spouse labored to overturn the 2020 election outcomes, and nonetheless one other, Samuel Alito, whose enthusiasm for flying insurrection-related flags is well-known. It’s a court docket custom-made to wrench the vote away from the folks and provides it to Donald Trump.
