After SCOTUS Fails To Act, States Must Step Up To Save Election Day

The current conservative Supreme Court rarely gets it wrong when it comes to election administration.

But this week’s ruling in Watson v. RNC, that reliable majority flipped on its head with Justices John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett siding with the liberals by holding that, despite plain language in federal law dictating one clear federal election day, states are free to hold federal elections that go days, weeks, or even months into an overtime period for absentee and mail ballot collection.

Now, it’s up to the 14 states that allow for post-election day ballot receipt to inject confidence in Election Day by reaffirming – as required by federal law – that Election Day does not somehow mean “Election Week” or even “Election Month.”

In a 5-4 decision that saw Justice Barrett siding with the likes of Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, the court upheld a Mississippi law that allowed for ballots that were only postmarked by election day, but received by election officials days later, to be counted in the regularly-tabulated totals for an election.

In arriving at this conclusion, the Court followed contorted logic that an election could be deemed to be concluded despite states being permitted to actively collect – and solicit the receipt of – new absentee ballots.

And it summarily discounted the fact that, since first class mail may be recalled, a voter’s choice is not final until that ballot gets delivered to the election official, meaning that for voters who vote by mail, that choice isn’t finalized until the mail is actually delivered.