Supreme Court told accepting votes after Election Day is without precedent or legal grounds

One of the procedures that Democrats like to install in elections across America is absentee ballots. The fact is they are more susceptible to fraud.

Likewise with mail ballots.

And also schemes that allow votes to be accepted and counted even if they are not cast on Election Day, a federally designated time frame.

That fight now is pending before the U.S. Supreme Court and longtime government watchdog Judicial Watch has filed a friend-of-the-court brief arguing that accepting votes after the legal Election Day is closed is without precedent or legal grounds.

The fight involves an election integrity case brought on behalf of the Libertarian Party of Mississippi. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of appeals struck down a state law letting election officials count ballots that are up to five days past the deadline.

Leftists then appealed to the high court.

In its filing, Judicial Watch points out that “the ordinary meaning of ‘election’ at the time Congress enacted the statutes includes the full process of voting and the receipt of ballots by officials. Counting post-Election Day ballots is a relatively recent practice without any historic foundation. Allowing ballots to ‘trickle in’ after Election Day creates opportunities for fraud and erodes public confidence.”

The legal organization charges: “The whole point of the federal Election-Day statutes is to set a single uniform day for the election. Allowing ballots to trickle in days or weeks after Election Day is antithetical to that basic goal. Indeed, a patchwork of state ballot-receipt deadlines replicates the problems Congress was trying to remedy with a single national Election Day. It is entirely implausible to conclude that Congress—when thrice exercising its preemptive power under the Elections and Electors Clauses—left the door open for states to vitiate those statutes by postponing electoral outcomes with post-election ballot-receipt deadlines. Congress certainly did not leave states the power to undo this important federal time regulation by simply declaring all mailboxes to be ballot boxes.”

Judicial Watch continued, “Through the federal Election-Day statutes, Congress exercised its constitutional authority to set a uniform time for federal elections to occur. Text, historical practice, precedent, and common sense all demonstrate that those statutes set the deadline by which ballots must be submitted and received. Simply put, the ballot box closes on Election Day, and ballots that are not received until days or weeks after the date specified by Congress arrive after Election Day and should not be counted.”

“This is the most important Supreme Court election integrity case in a generation. The pandemic spread of states counting late ballots received after Election Day is a flagrant violation of long-standing federal law that not only encourages voter fraud but also severely undermines public confidence in our elections,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

Just last month, the Supreme Court ruled 7–2 in favor of granting standing in a historic case filed by Judicial Watch on behalf of Congressman Mike Bost and two presidential electors. The case challenges an Illinois law allowing the counting of ballots received up to 14 days after Election Day.

The filing charged, “As things stand under state law, the ballot boxes remain open in some states for days and even weeks after the day designated by Congress to bring the election to a close. That reality would make no sense to the legislators who enacted the Election-Day statutes or the voters who first read them. Instead, the original public meaning and the common sense of the matter is that the polls and the ballot box should close on Election Day. That allows the counting to begin promptly and substantially reduces both the opportunities for fraud and the perception that the votes are still coming in from precincts that favor one candidate or the other. In short, the policy arguments, plain text and common sense are in one accord: the election ends when the ballot box is closed, and federal law commands that to happen on Election Day.”

It makes no sense, the organization pointed out, to have an “election” considered to include casting ballots, but not receiving and counting them, the very act that changes a worthless piece of paper into a vote on the future of the nation.

“The ‘election’ does not end with the ‘offer’ to vote because that by itself has no electoral consequence. Only once the ‘scrap[] of paper’ is received into official custody does the preference reflected on the ballot turn into a completed vote.”