The justices took up an appeal from Mississippi after a panel of three judges nominated by the Republican president on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last year that the state law allowing ballots that arrive shortly after Election Day to be counted violated federal law.
Mississippi is among 18 states and the District of Columbia that accept mailed ballots received after Election Day as long as the ballots are postmarked on or before that date, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
The list includes swing states such as Nevada and states such as Colorado, Oregon and Utah that rely heavily on mail voting.
This is important because if you control the mail you can make ballots late, and if that means they won’t be counted then you can choose to make mail from blue counties run late on Election Day in order to drive an election outcome.
This is why Trump hired Dejoy to run the USPS before last election. He spent 6 months gutting USPS’s backend mail sorting equipment leading to huge mail delays.
Without actually funding the USPS, this will effectively kill mail-in voting. You could send your ballot in a month in advance, and it might not get counted because USPS can’t be bothered to get it in until the week after Nov 5th.
Even if you fund it, someone could do something like a physical DDoS on an opposing stronghold by just sending all overwhelming number of letters leading up to election day. Delivery time is somewhat elastic, and delays can be politically targeted.
Yup, I live in Utah and the ballot clearly states that it only needs to be postmarked by election day.
Can’t see how SCOTUS weasels out of this. States run elections, states get to make the rules. End. Proponents of the ban are saying counting late ballots violate federal law. What federal law? Couldn’t find anything scanning these articles.
In any case, how does federal law supercede state election laws? State control of elections is in the fucking Constitution.
Section 4 Congress
Clause 1 Elections Clause
The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.
A note that while the Supreme Court majority is an arm of the Republican party, the appeal that brought it there is against the 5th Circuit ruling that late ballots weren’t allowed. The SC could confirm it and expand the ruling to the country, but this is also the only way to fix the lower court’s bad ruling.
