5th Circuit Says Ef Your Mail-In Ballots, Mississippi! Other Judges In Other States Say Ef You *Less So*!
Balls and strikes and shit.
So many ways to serve up election fuckery and chaos! The latest platter of hot bullshit comes from three Trump-appointed judges on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, who sided with the Republican National Committee lawyers and the Libertarian Party of Mississippi to agree that ballots mailed by Election Day but received sometime in the five days after should simply get thrown in the garbage. Presumably that’s even if a voter’s ballot got barbecued in a burning mailbox, or delayed by the shitty postal service, the shittiness of which a certain Trump-appointed Postmaster General has been perfecting.
The world’s three Trumpiest judges did not issue an injunction, so this ruling will not affect this election; the case was returned to the lower court to figure out how to implement it in the future. Also for now, the circuit court’s ruling only applies to Mississippi, but 18 states plus DC accept ballots that are postmarked by Election Day but arrive after. These late-arriving mail-in ballots that other states allow could constitute literally millions of ballots, and the lawsuit and opinion potentially opens the door for the Supreme Court to trash all of those ballots.
In a Cirque-du-Soleil feat of pretzeled logic, the three judges, Andrew Oldham, Kyle Duncan, and James Ho, invented a new definition for the word “cast,” for ballots, changing it to mean “when the state takes custody of it.” And what about states’ rights to make their own election rules? Well, if the states wanted to have rights to run their own elections, how did Congress make an Election Day, huh? But early voting is okay, because that’s when the voting is consummated. Ew, must they use that language?
And what about military ballots? Well, huff the judges, even during the Civil War and World War I, “during the height of war-time exigency, a ballot could be counted only if received by Election Day.”
Mississippi is home base for about 12,000 active members of the military and also members of the National Guard, which recently deployed soldiers to help recovery efforts after hurricanes Milton and Helene, seems like kind of an ef you to them.
In other ballot news, the Nevada state supreme court on Monday ruled against the RNC and said that the state can count mailed ballots that arrive without a postmark, up to three days after Election Day.
And a federal judge in Pennsylvania rejected the RNC’s attempt to restrict military and overseas ballots, arguments courts had already also rejected in North Carolina and Michigan. And in Illinois, a judge partially dismissed a lawsuit from Tom Fitton’s right-wing group Judicial Watch, saying no, they could not sue to challenge the state’s voter roll maintenance policies.
Just a few of more than 100 lawsuits the RNC has filed to suppress voting around the country! Stay tuned, because there will always be more. Follow Democracy Docket if you want to stay on top of it all!
So, exactly how are the claimants meaningfully harmed by ballots dated mailed on or before Election Day but received before the canvass?
The only cognizable harm would be their preferred candidates lose. The law, until now, does not recognize electoral victory as a vested right. Other voters aren't harmed -- their votes counted.
Another filing that is not a "case or controversy." And the judges blame their sliding esteem on a lack of civics education. That's true, but the citizen with the educational deficit is wearing a robe.
A postmark has always been the gold standard as to when something was sent.
If they can do this with votes then they could just leave a bunch of ballots sitting in a pile, especially from urban areas, until the time expires. How do they prove when it was received in an official way? They can’t.
There are many other legal situations that involve postmarks as well, sending payments by mail, returning legal documents.
There is no apparatus that can officially support when mail is delivered unless they are expecting all ballots to go by certified mail.