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President Trump has claimed he is “going to lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS” and is currently lobbying the US Senate to effectively outlaw the practice as part of his push to pass the Save America Act.
The conservative justices on the US Supreme Court appear eager to assist with Trump’s crusade.
On Monday, the justices heard a challenge from the Republican National Committee and the Trump administration to a Mississippi law allowing mail-in ballots to be counted up to five days after Election Day as long as they are postmarked by the day of the election. Sixteen states have similar grace periods on the books, and 29 states accept ballots from overseas and military voters sent before or on Election Day but received after. The New York Times found that during the 2024 election “at least 725,000 ballots were postmarked by Election Day and arrived within the legally accepted post-election window.”
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, the most right-wing appellate court in the country, struck down Mississippi’s law in the run-up to the 2024 election in what UCLA law professor Rick Hasen called a “bonkers opinion.”
But at least several Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices want to turn that bonkers decision into settled law—at the very moment that Trump is trying to eliminate mail ballots nationwide and “take over” elections.
I’m not fully convinced this benefits Republicans that much. If voting is harder it’ll mean that the people who vote either have more time or more motivation. Republicans have more time, but Democrats have a lot more motivation.
Mail in voting is an equalizer. Nearly everyone lives very close to a place that accepts outgoing mail, with most at their own homes. Once you require people to physically go somewhere special to vote, then you can put the squeeze on everyone there, in an extremely unequal way. You remember the stories of people waiting 8 hours to vote in Atlanta? Coming soon to everywhere statistically identified as “blue”.
Voting will be harder mostly for people who vote left. So even if some Republican voters are disenfranchised it will still be a positive swing for the GOP
Yes, but of the people on the right for whom it’ll be harder to vote: how many of them will be motivated to make the extra effort?
I guess the GOP has calculated it and determine this particular cheat is worth the effort. I just hope they got it wrong.
Don’t forget the military. This will disenfranchise a large proportion of active duty members