Supreme Court to decide case on post-Election Day ballot counting
Source: Roll Call
Posted June 2, 2025 at 11:29am
The Supreme Court announced Monday it will decide a case out of Illinois over the ability to challenge post-Election Day ballot counting, a high-profile cause for President Donald Trump and Republicans. The appeal, brought by Rep. Mike Bost, R-Ill., and Illinois Republican presidential electors, seeks to revive their challenge to a state law that allows officials to count mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day in federal elections.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit had tossed their case, ruling that Bost and the Republicans could not have the legal right to challenge the state law because they could not show they were harmed by it. With the Supreme Court appeal, Bost and the other challengers seek to allow challenges to the Illinois law and other laws in states nationwide, which they argue have been improperly shut down by the courts.
In their petition, the Republicans told the Supreme Court this is a good chance to address post-Election Day ballot counting in normal litigation “outside of the high-stakes, emergency, post-election litigation where these issues commonly arise.” Under the Illinois law, state officials count absentee or mail-in ballots that are postmarked before or on Election Day and arrive between Election Day and the end of the period to count provisional ballots, which the challengers identify as 14 days.
Illinois is one of dozens of states with similar post-Election Day ballot counting. The group argued that Congress has the power to set the federal Election Day under the Constitution, and it has done so through numerous laws. “No otherwise valid state regulation can limit or abridge a valid exercise of this federal power,” the petition said.
Read more: https://rollcall.com/2025/06/02/supreme-court-to-decide-case-on-post-election-day-ballot-counting/
This is one of those things that some of you may have seen me harp on - in general - "elections" are handled BY THE STATE.
There are certain criteria (mostly related to Presidential elections) that are in the Constitution, with some recent laws that provided clarification (e.g., the several "Electoral Count Act" laws), and of course those 4 Constitutional Amendments dealing with the franchise (allowing blacks to vote, women to vote, 18-year olds to vote, and forbidding a "poll tax" or equivalent). There were also some nibbling around the edges laws dealing with election equipment and certification of it and expanding means for registering to vote.
But other than that - the feds can't tell a state that they "MUST HAVE" a "primary" or when that should happen or how they count votes or even what their ballot should look like.
The "post-election day" counting was generally due to allowing receipt of ballots from people overseas - mostly military stationed in bases, where a ballot mail may take much longer to finally arrive to the person at the base (or in off-base housing) and to get it back to the states in time.