{"id":8786,"date":"2026-03-23T23:57:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T23:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/8786\/"},"modified":"2026-03-23T23:57:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T23:57:09","slug":"the-alito-wing-of-the-supreme-court-sounds-sold-on-trumps-voter-fraud-lies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/8786\/","title":{"rendered":"The Alito wing of the Supreme Court sounds sold on Trump\u2019s voter fraud lies."},"content":{"rendered":"

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The Supreme Court may be poised to commit the single biggest act of disenfranchisement in modern history in a direct assault on the constitutional authority of states to set election laws. During Monday\u2019s arguments in Watson v. Republican National Committee, the conservative justices lined up to attack state laws permitting the counting of ballots that arrive shortly after Election Day if they were postmarked on time. About 30 states have enacted similar laws, and they have had a major impact on American elections: In 2024 alone, more than 750,000<\/a> late-arriving ballots were counted because of a state\u2019s grace period. Now there is a very real chance that the Supreme Court will wipe out these laws in one fell swoop, causing chaos in the upcoming midterms that could disproportionately impact Democratic voters.<\/p>\n

That news, in itself, is a five-alarm fire for democracy. But what makes it even more disturbing is the fact that so many justices proved eager to embrace a legal theory that is incoherent, dishonest, and rooted in paranoid hostility toward mail voting. The court\u2019s right flank spent much of Monday\u2019s arguments airing grievances about vote-by-mail\u2019s supposed potential for fraud alongside partisan hostility toward lax ballot deadlines. Because there is so little evidence of said fraud, these justices warned of the threat of \u201cappearance of fraud\u201d as being just as dangerous\u2014with little note about who the biggest purveyor of the false perception<\/a> that fraud infests our elections is and what his real aims are<\/a>. These justices concocted absurd hypotheticals seemingly designed to highlight the nation\u2019s ostensible lack of election integrity<\/a>. Yet they spent remarkably little time offering any legal justification for striking down democratically enacted laws that govern more than half the country. This court may not have endorsed Donald Trump\u2019s big lie in 2020, as the president recently griped<\/a>. But it could be on the brink of imposing one of his favored voter suppression policies by judicial decree.<\/p>\n

Watson began when the Republican National Committee challenged a Mississippi law that directs election officials to count mail ballots postmarked by Election Day, as long as they arrive within five business days of Election Day. The RNC argued that Congress has preempted such laws through federal legislation, mostly passed in the 19th century, setting the date for federal elections. Just before the 2024 election, the far-right 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed<\/a>, striking down the Mississippi statute. It asserted that the words \u201cElection Day,\u201d as used in the federal code, mean the date by which state officials must receive an eligible ballot. So federal law, according to the 5th Circuit, nullifies state statutes that seek to count any ballots that come in after that date. When the Supreme Court took up the case, the Trump administration sided with the 5th Circuit, urging<\/a> the justices to strike down Mississippi\u2019s statute and those like it.<\/p>\n

The problem with this theory\u2014as the liberal justices hammered throughout arguments\u2014is that it has no basis in law, history, or precedent. \u201cElection Day\u201d has long been understood<\/a> to mean the date by which voters cast their ballots. (For federal elections, it\u2019s enshrined into law as the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.) This settled meaning is, Justice Sonia Sotomayor pointed out, why many states allowed soldiers<\/a> to vote in the field before Election Day during the Civil War. It is why some of those states established a grace period<\/a> by which officials could receive absentee ballots from soldiers in the field after Election Day, including through the mail. It is why, in the 20th century, states expanded early in-person voting and mail voting without serious legal issue. And it is why, in this century, Congress deferred<\/a> to states\u2019 own ballot deadlines when creating rules<\/a> to help military and overseas voters participate in elections.<\/p>\n

The unbroken principle is straightforward: Voters must submit their ballots by Election Day. And until Congress declares otherwise, states get to decide how long after that date a valid ballot can arrive. That\u2019s how it works under the Constitution<\/a>, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson reminded both Paul Clement, arguing for the RNC, and Solicitor General John Sauer, who teamed up to oppose Mississippi\u2019s law: States have primary authority to regulate federal elections until Congress chooses to override those rules with a clear voice. And Congress has made no such choice here.<\/p>\n

One by one, the Republican-appointed justices swatted away these inconvenient facts, fixating instead on wild hypotheticals about voter fraud. Justice Samuel Alito asked Mississippi Solicitor General Scott Stuart, who defended the Mississippi law, if he thought it was \u201clegitimate for us to take into account\u201d Congress\u2019 passage of Election Day statutes \u201cfor the purpose of combating fraud or the appearance of fraud.\u201d The justice noted that \u201csome of the briefs have argued that confidence in election outcomes can be seriously undermined if the apparent outcome of the election on the day after the polls close is radically flipped by the acceptance later of a big stash of ballots that flip the election.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stuart explained that even the Trump administration had failed to identify \u201ca single example of fraud from post\u2013Election Day ballot receipt in this century.\u201d But Alito\u2019s argument was not grounded in reality\u2014or, for that matter, law. It is not the Supreme Court\u2019s job to decide whether Mississippi\u2019s law increases \u201cfraud or the appearance of fraud\u201d (though it doesn\u2019t). Its job is to decide whether Congress intended to foreclose grace periods for mail ballots when it set federal Election Day more than 150 years ago. It obviously did not; indeed, it could not have foreseen the widespread adoption of mail voting well over a century later. Besides, Alito\u2019s logic (to the extent there was any) is circular: The only reason there may be an \u201cappearance of fraud\u201d is because opponents of mail voting spread unfounded claims of fraud. If the resulting paranoia can be weaponized against otherwise valid voting rules, then the Republican Party has found a cheat code to kill off any election law in court.<\/p>\n

Most of Alito\u2019s conservative colleagues, however, shared his suspicion of mail voting, some in conspiratorial turns. Justice Brett Kavanaugh fretted that \u201clate-arriving ballots open up a risk of what might destabilize the election results,\u201d warning that \u201ccharges of a rigged election could explode.\u201d Should the court, he asked Stuart, safeguard \u201cconfidence in the election process?\u201d He also pressed Stuart to acknowledge that states do not \u201cdisenfranchise\u201d voters by setting an Election Day ballot deadline\u2014evidently to defend the court from charges that it would be putting its thumb on the scale for Republicans at the expense of voters in future elections by invalidating these laws.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n Mark Joseph Stern
\n The Supreme Court Just Heeded One of Ketanji Brown Jackson\u2019s Sharpest Dissents
\n Read More\n <\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

If the court does strike down these laws in June, giving 30 states fewer than 150 days to change their mail voting rules, the results could be disastrous. Perhaps sensing that threat, Kavanaugh asked Clement if the \u201cPurcell principle<\/a>\u201d\u2014the idea that courts can\u2019t significantly alter election rules too close to the vote\u2014was an issue in this case. Clement waved away that concern, and Kavanaugh seemed satisfied, declining to ask any follow-ups. Of course, neither man explained what such a scenario would look like on the ground: State election officials would scramble to change the rules<\/a> on the fly and somehow inform millions of voters that they must now mail their ballot well in advance of Election Day.<\/p>\n

With his questions, it sounded as if Kavanaugh was trying to manage backlash to his eventual vote to, yes, \u201cdisenfranchise\u201d countless Americans. The justice continues to transform<\/a> into the new Alito. Meanwhile, Justice Clarence Thomas questioned whether there was any difference between mailing a ballot and handing it to your neighbor, and rejected the Civil War precedent as irrelevant. (Thomas has previously promoted<\/a> Trump\u2019s claims of widespread voter fraud.)<\/p>\n

Justice Neil Gorsuch picked up the baton to spin out a strange scenario in which voters \u201crecall\u201d their ballots shortly after Election Day in response to a late-breaking sex scandal. \u201cIn that hypothetical,\u201d he asked Stuart, \u201cdid the election happen on Election Day?\u201d Stuart explained that \u201crecalling\u201d a ballot after Election Day is already forbidden by state law. Gorsuch at first refused to believe him, claiming greater expertise in the minutiae of the Mississippi code. Then the justice asked what would stop it from happening even if it were illegal.<\/p>\n

Stuart did not have a particularly good answer to this and many other bizarre questions, perhaps revealing that, as a MAGA Republican, his heart was not in the case. But he could have pointed out that Gorsuch\u2019s hypothetical proves too much: Until a ballot has been counted, it could be changed in any number of ways; a voter could break into the election office and alter her ballot, too. (This scenario is only a tad more fanciful than the justice\u2019s hypothetical, since there is no evidence of voters \u201crecalling\u201d a mail ballot after an election.) No state requires every ballot to be counted on Election Day, which undermines Gorsuch\u2019s all-on-one-day theory.<\/p>\n

So does another point in Mississippi\u2019s favor: The fact that early voting does not, by definition, occur on Election Day. If federal law really requires voting on \u201cthe day of the election,\u201d as the plaintiffs claim, how can states let people cast ballots well in advance of the election? Both Chief Justice John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett sounded hung up on this question, and Justice Elena Kagan seemed to angle for their votes by pressing Clement and Sauer on it. Neither Roberts nor Barrett gave away their view, but both sounded genuinely troubled by this issue. Rightly so: Neither Clement nor Sauer could offer a cogent reason why, under their theory, early voting is legal but late-arriving ballots are not. \u201cIt seems to me,\u201d the chief told Sauer pointedly, \u201cmaybe you\u2019re not saying anything other than, Well, that\u2019s different.\u201d<\/p>\n

Barrett, too, sounded skeptical that Clement and Sauer could insist that Congress preserved one historical aspect of elections\u2014requiring ballots on Election Day\u2014while disregarding the rest. After all, when Congress enacted our modern election dates, we didn\u2019t have early voting; why isn\u2019t that suspect, too? \u201cIt seems to me if you look at historical practice,\u201d she told Clement, \u201cwhat an election meant was showing up in person and casting your vote and being qualified as the voter on that same day.\u201d So if \u201cwe\u2019re just going to say that historically it needs to look like it always looked, how come those features fall out?\u201d Clement told her \u201cthey probably fall out because nobody thinks they\u2019re essential,\u201d a remarkably weak answer: There\u2019s no evidence that Congress thought Election Day ballot deadlines were essential, either.<\/p>\n


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If You Think Iran Is a Political Disaster for Trump, You Have Another Thing Coming
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Alito Wing of the Supreme Court Sure Sounds Sold on Trump\u2019s Voter Fraud Lies
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

As these questions indicate, Barrett and Roberts hold the case in their hands. All three liberals, meanwhile, forcefully argued in defense of Mississippi\u2019s law. The four most conservative justices trashed it. So it likely comes down to these two, and the stakes are chillingly high for such a photo finish. As the Republican National Committee concedes, Democrats are more likely to vote by mail today and thus more likely to be disenfranchised if late-arriving ballots are tossed out. Three quarters of a million voters relied on these laws to protect their vote in the last federal election. If they are wiped away, Americans voting by mail will have to rely on the vagaries of the Postal Service to ensure their ballots arrive on time. And just last month, the Supreme Court stripped away citizens\u2019 ability<\/a> to sue USPS when postal carriers intentionally destroy or withhold their ballots.<\/p>\n

Looming over this dispute is another, more existential concern: Can this Supreme Court be trusted to safeguard free and fair elections in 2026 and 2028 when Trump is committed<\/a> to subverting them? Monday\u2019s arguments indicated that four justices are, at a minimum, easily swayed by Republicans\u2019 bogus claims of fraud, and open to changing the rules to tilt the playing field. Watson should have been laughed out of court<\/a>. Instead it received a warm reception. Even if the plaintiffs lose 5\u20134\u2014and it is an if\u2014that margin will be far too close for comfort. A democracy that rests on the knife\u2019s edge of a single Supreme Court vote is living on borrowed time.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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