The Supreme Court held Wednesday that candidates for office can sue to challenge rules governing vote counting in elections.
In a 7-2 decision, the majority held that Republican Illinois Rep. Michael Bost has standing to challenge state rules that allow mail-in ballots to be counted up to 14 days after Election Day.
“Candidates have a concrete and particularized interest in the rules that govern the counting of votes in their elections, regardless whether those rules harm their electoral prospects or increase the cost of their campaigns,” Chief Justice John Roberst wrote in the majority opinion. “Their interest extends to the integrity of the election—and the democratic process by which they earn or lose the support of the people they seek to represent.”
Justice Amy Coney Barrett agreed with the judgement but disagreed with the majority’s reasoning.
“In my view, Congressman Bost has standing because he has suffered a traditional pocketbook injury, not because of his status as a candidate,” she wrote in a concurring opinion joined by Justice Elena Kagan.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.
“Bost has plainly failed to allege facts that support an inference of standing under our established precedents,” Jackson wrote. “By carving out a bespoke rule for candidate-plaintiffs—granting them standing ‘to challenge the rules that govern the counting of votes,’ simply and solely because they are ‘candidate[s]’ for office…—the Court now complicates and destabilizes both our standing law and America’s electoral processes.”
This is a breaking news story and will be updated.
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