The Supreme Court shot down another Republican request to overturn a decision allowing mail-in ballots to be counted after Election Day.
On Thursday, the high court voted 5-3 declining to grant a request from the North Carolina Republicans on the issue. The decision allows absentee ballots in the state to be counted up until nine days after the election. Earlier this week, the Supreme Court blocked a request from Pennsylvania Republicans to overturn a lower court decision permitting absentee ballots received to be counted 3 days after the election.
Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Brett Kavanaugh joined the liberal justices in the decision. Associate Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch said they would “grant the application on the issue of the ballot-receipt deadline.” Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself from the case.
Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg told the Associated Press that Barrett did not participate in the case “because of the need for a prompt resolution and because she has not had time to fully review the parties’ filings.”
Timothy Moore, the state house’s GOP speaker, and Philip Berger, the president pro tempore of the state’s senate, asked the Supreme Court in their filing to “ensure that this unconstitutional usurpation of power and ‘changing the rules of the game in the middle of an election’ is not allowed to stand and to avoid the specter of a post-election dispute over the validity of ballots received during the disputed period in North Carolina.” The Trump campaign and Republican National Committee argued in a second filing that the move by the state board of elections usurped the constitutional power of the North Carolina legislature.
“It is indisputably clear that the federal Constitution grants the North Carolina General Assembly exclusive authority to establish the time, place, and manner of federal elections within North Carolina,” they argued. “It is also indisputably clear that the unelected Board has no authority—and certainly no authority on the eve of a federal election after votes have already been submitted—to impose arbitrary changes in the rules that the General Assembly has enacted.”
The North Carolina state board of elections extended the period of counting absentee ballots from three to nine days earlier this month due to the coronavirus pandemic. That decision was made by the board of elections after they entered a consent agreement with the North Carolina Alliance for Retired Americans, a union-affiliated group, extending the date from Nov. 6 to Nov. 12. The agreement was approved by a state court.
North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein, a Democrat, applauded the Supreme Court’s decision in a statement. “North Carolina voters had a huge win tonight at the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court upheld the State Board of Elections’ effort to ensure that every eligible vote counts, even during a pandemic. Voters must have their mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day, but now we all have certainty that every eligible vote will be counted. Let’s vote!” Stein said.
