World News – CA – High Court will not extend postal ballot deadline

WASHINGTON – Supreme Court sides with Republicans to prevent Wisconsin from counting ballots sent out after election day

In a 5-3 order, judges on Monday refused to reinstate a lower court order asking that mailed ballots be counted if they are received up to six days after the 3 election court federal appeal had already stayed this order

All three Liberal justices opposed the court order just before the Senate began voting on Amy Coney Barrett’s appointment to the Supreme Court

Chief Justice John Roberts joined the Liberals last week in preserving a Pennsylvania state court order extending the absentee ballot deadline, but voted against in the Wisconsin case, which has been submitted to federal courts

« Different bodies of law and different precedents govern these two situations and require, in these particular circumstances, that we allow changes to the electoral rules in Pennsylvania but not in Wisconsin, » Roberts wrote

Democrats argued that the flood of mail-in votes and other challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic made it necessary to extend the period during which ballots can be counted Wisconsin is one of the hotspots of the countries for COVID-19, with hospitals treating record numbers of patients with the disease

Republicans opposed the extension, saying voters had plenty of opportunities to vote before the polls closed on election day and the rules should not be changed so close to the election

Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Ben Wikler responded to the ruling by promising Democrats « would organize a huge voter education campaign » to incite around 360,000 people who had not yet returned the ballots. postal vote to hand them over to 8 pm on polling day, or to vote in person

« Absentee voting in Wisconsin is extremely easy and hundreds of thousands of people have done it already – last minute attempts to change election laws only confuse voters and erode the integrity of our elections, « he said in a statement

Judges often say nothing, or very little, about their reasons for voting in these emergency cases, but on Monday four judges wrote opinions totaling 35 pages setting out their competing justifications

« As the COVID pandemic rages on, the Court has failed to adequately protect the Nation’s voters, » Judge Elena Kagan wrote in a dissent noting that the state had authorized the six-day extension for the primary vote in April and that approximately 80,000 ballots were received after primary election day

Judge Neil Gorsuch acknowledged the complications the pandemic adds to the vote, but defended the court’s action

« No one doubts that holding national elections in the midst of a pandemic poses serious challenges But none of this means that individual judges can improvise with their own electoral rules instead of those that representatives of the people have adopted, ”wrote Gorsuch

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Ballot, US Supreme Court, Wisconsin