(Headline USA) Republicans are challenging extended mail ballot deadlines in a legal maneuver that could have widespread implications for mail voting before the presidential election in November.
A lawsuit filed last week in Mississippi follows a similar one last year in North Dakota that was recently dismissed.
The Republican National Committee, the Mississippi Republican Party, a member of the state Republican Executive Committee and an election commissioner in one county filed its lawsuit against Secretary of State Michael Watson, himself a Republican, and six local election officials.
The suit challenges a Mississippi law that says absentee ballots in presidential elections will be counted if they are postmarked by Election Day and received within five days. It argues that Mississippi improperly extends the federal election beyond the election date set by Congress and that, as a result, “timely, valid ballots are diluted by untimely, invalid ballots.”
“Federal law is very clear—Election Day is the Tuesday after the first Monday in November,” RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said in a statement announcing the lawsuit. “However, some states accept and count ballots days and days after Election Day, and we believe that practice is wrong.”
RNC spokesperson Gates McGavick said the group hopes for a ruling before the presidential election that state deadlines allowing ballots to be received after Election Day violate federal law.
“This case could have major ramifications in future elections—not just in Mississippi but across the country,” he said.
Leftist anti-integrity activists are panicked about the potential impact beyond those two states if a judge rules that deadlines for receiving mailed ballots that stretch past Election Day, Nov. 5, violate federal law.
They say it’s possible such a decision would lead to a nationwide injunction.
“This effort risks disenfranchising Mississippi voters, but we don’t want that to also be precedent for other states,” Abhi Rahman, communications director of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, said in response to the most recent lawsuit.
Leftists frequently use the “voting access” trope to justify rules that interfere with election integrity, such as potentially allowing illegitimate ballots after the Election Day results have been tallied in order to reverse the outcome of an unfavorable election.
Apart from trying to justify a reversal of the outcome, it is unclear why Democrats could not simply encourage voters to vote in person on Election Day or else arrange to have their mail-in ballots sent prior to the deadline.
Mississippi and North Dakota are among 19 states that accept late-arriving mailed ballots as long as the ballots are postmarked on or before Election Day, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
That includes political swing states such as Nevada and North Carolina, both of which are currently poised to go red in the election based on polling. Some states, including Colorado, Oregon and Utah, rely heavily on mail voting.
Former President Donald Trump has long railed against the use of mail voting, in particular when many states illegally expanded its use during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, using dubious emergency orders to circumvent their own state legislatures and constitutions.
Several Republican-controlled states have since moved to tighten rules around mail voting in an effort to close the loopholes that threatened to further undermine election integrity.
The Democratic National Committee said it was watching the cases closely and will fight any attempt to strengthen election integrity that could cost it votes.
Democratic state Rep. Bryant Clark called the Mississippi lawsuit “another effort to try to stifle votes and stop the votes of a certain segment of the population.” He said the suit may also lead to similar efforts across the country.
In North Dakota, a similar federal lawsuit against the state election director was filed by the conservative Public Interest Legal Foundation on behalf of a county auditor, Mark Splonskowski, who cited what he said was a conflict between state and federal law.
That lawsuit was dismissed Friday by Republican Judge Daniel Traynor,
“Splonskowski’s oath does not require him to uphold the United States Constitution, Traynor wrote in his decision.
“It simply requires him to perform his duties as a North Dakota election official to the best of his ability,” the judge added. “Splonskowski is also not conflicted by the controversy he posits in this lawsuit.”
Richard L. Hasen, a law professor at the far-left University of California, Los Angeles, criticized the legal basis of the lawsuits. In the Mississippi case, he claimed the RNC was to trying to gain a political advantage because it “believes late-arriving mail ballots are more likely to favor Democrats.”
Tthe 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which includes Mississippi, has historically been quite conservative “and not protective of voting rights,” he claimed.
“It would be a far reach for a challenge to Mississippi law to lead to a national injunction against this,” he said. “But it’s possible.”
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
