The U.S. Supreme Court denied Wednesday two requests by Republicans that the court revive a tighter deadline for returning absentee ballots in North Carolina.
The dispute centered on a consent agreement that the State Board of Elections reached as part of a lawsuit brought by voting rights advocates. The board agreed to extend the receipt deadline for mail ballots from three days after the election to nine days after the election. It also loosened up the rules around the state’s witness requirement for absentee voting.
Both the state Republican Party and the GOP legislative leaders filed requests asking the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene.
Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch indicated that they voted in favor of reinstating the tighter ballot deadline. Gorsuch, joined by Alito, wrote a dissenting opinion explaining why he would have granted the lawmakers’ request to block the agreement.
The orders were the latest volley in the Supreme Court’s jockeying over who has authority to tweak election rules because of the pandemic. Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh have all signaled that they believe courts should defer to state legislature’s decisions to make not to make changes in how elections are carried out. Kavanaugh, however, did not publicly indicate a dissent in the North Carolina dispute.
A key detail in the North Carolina case is that the legislature had granted the state board authority to change some election rules in the event that a “natural disaster” causes the normal election schedule to be “disrupted” and that the board’s changes don’t “unnecessar[ily]” conflict with state laws.
Gorsuch’s dissent focused on why he didn’t believe the pandemic met those conditions.
Read the orders below:
I hope Gorsuch gets a good taste of teh Covid and then tells us how a pandemic is no big deal. Sorry but its been a long day. I’m losing any sympathy for assholes that can’t recognize a public health threat causing immeasurable death when its fucking staring them in the eyes. If this isn’t an emergency, what the fuck is?
Florida being declared for Biden by 10 ET.
Republicans losing power in both chambers and the executive sure is one.
The new SCOTUS is no longer calling balls & strikes, they are calling winners & losers, . . . . . but on what basis, because it certainly does not seem to be the Constitution or the Law.
They are going to have to call themselves losers when next congress votes to expand the number of Justices. They know that is going to happen and they are trying to prevent the democratic landslide that is coming. Trump was too inept to steal the election, the laptop of hell got no traction, the Justices are going to have to do the dirty work themselves.