Supreme Court conservatives 'chomping at the bit' to kill vote-by-mail: legal experts

President Donald Trump has been waging war against vote-by-mail since the 2020 election, claiming that it is ripe with fraud. Now, conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices appear eager to follow through, legal analysts noticed on Monday.

During oral arguments in the case Watson v. Republican National Committee (RNC), states are being challenged on whether they can accept ballots that were postmarked on election day. This has been the practice in Mississippi for past elections, which offers a five-day grace period for late-arriving ballots mailed by that day.

It argues that the law is preempted by longstanding federal laws that set “the Tuesday next after the first Monday in November … as the day for the election” for federal elections.

Legal analysts listening to the oral arguments indicated that the conservatives appeared giddy over the prospect of making vote-by-mail more difficult.

"If this oral argument is any indication, the Republican justices are chomping at the bit to micromanage election administration in the United States," said legal reporter Cristian Farias on BlueSky.

Balls and Strikes legal expert Madiba Dennie said that she chatted with legal historian Mia Brett on Friday, "it just hit me that on Monday im [going to] have to hear [Justice Samuel] Alito banging the table while saying some s—— like 'it's called Election DAY, not Election MONTH' in that whiny voice and my friends would you like to know what just happened? Sure enough Alito was bangin on that table while carrying on like 'We don’t have Election Day anymore, we have Election Month or Election MonthS — early voting can start the month before, ballots can be received weeks later ...'"

Slate legal analyst Mark Joseph Stern gave more specifics, saying that there have been "some very disturbing questions from the Republican-appointed justices in today's Supreme Court arguments — definitely several votes to strike down laws in 30 states which count mail ballots that arrive shortly after Election Day, as long as they're cast by Election Day. Not what I was hoping to hear."

"Alito strongly implied that vote-by-mail, as practiced in most of the country today, is highly susceptible to fraud. [Neil] Gorsuch and [Clarence] Thomas leaned in that direction as well. [Amy Coney] Barrett and [Chief Justice John] Roberts are harder to read," Stern added.

He noted that "SO many questions from the Republican-appointed justices so far [have] little or nothing to do with the law." He said that the justices appear to be "venting their evident frustrations about modern election laws that broadly authorize mail voting and fretting that they're spoiling elections with distrust and fraud. Really bad!"

"Has anyone found Alito's burner account on Truth Social yet? That guy is definitely extremely online," said Professor Jon Becker, a law school educator.

"Listening to Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson's questions during this oral argument and thinking, as I semi-regularly do, that putting KBJ on the Supreme Court might be the best decision Biden made during his presidency," added Dennie as the oral arguments unfolded.

Elections lawyer Marc Elias' firm, Democracy Docket was doing live updates of the arguments. One of those was commented on by lawyer David R. Lurie, who remarked that Justice Brett Kavanaugh "is very concerned about entirely bogus fraud claims."

Kavanaugh had raised "a concern with late-arriving ballots. He asks in the case a candidate looks like they're winning and later losing as ballots are counted, whether there will be increased claims from the losing side the election was stolen."

Lurie also mocked Alito for whining that Election Day is longer than he would like. "Alito has evolved into a barstool Justice."

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