The Supreme Court on Wednesday revived a Republican challenge to a law that allows the counting of late-arriving mail ballots, a target of President Donald Trump.
The high court ruled 7-2 that candidates like Rep. Mike Bost, R-Ill. have the legal right to such challenges, even if the ballots have little effect on the race.
“Win or lose, candidates suffer when the process departs from the law,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the opinion.
The justices reversed lower court rulings tossing out the case, but didn’t decide the underlying claims. The Supreme Court will hear another case on the the broader issue of late-arriving mail ballots this spring.
Two justices, Amy Coney Barrett and Elena Kagan, agreed with the outcome but would have decided the case more narrowly. Two others, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and Justice Sonia Sotomayor, dissented.
Bost appealed after lower courts tossed out the suit, ruling that Bost lacked legal standing because any ballots that arrived after election day had little impact on his lopsided win.
The state had argued that allowing the lawsuit would open the floodgates for more election litigation and “cause chaos” for election officials. Bost said vote-total considerations shouldn’t affect his ability to come to court.
The Illinois law allows ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted if they are received up to two weeks later. More than a dozen states, as well as the District of Columbia, accept mailed ballots received after Election Day as long they are postmarked on or before that date, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
The Trump administration weighed in to support Bost. The Republican president has asserted that late-arriving ballots and drawn-out electoral counts undermine confidence in elections.
