The Supreme Court has rejected an attempt by Democrats in Wisconsin to extend the mail-in voting deadline by six days.
The nation’s highest court ruled 5-3 that mail-in ballots in Wisconsin can only be counted if they are received by Election Day. The Monday ruling came right around the time Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed by the Senate as the newest associate justice of the Supreme Court. Democrats wanted to extend the deadline as long as the ballots were postmarked by Election Day.
The ruling differs from a 4-4 Supreme Court decision last week that upheld a ruling by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that required officials to receive and count mail-in ballots that arrive up to three days after the election as long as there is not proof the ballot was mailed in after the polls close on Nov. 3.
The three liberal justices on the court — Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Stephen Breyer — dissented in Monday’s decision. According to CNN, Chief Justice John Roberts made it clear in his concurring decision that the difference between Monday’s ruling and last week’s was that the decision in the Wisconsin case came from a lower federal court where an appeals court had then blocked the order, while in Pennsylvania, the order came from the state Supreme Court.
The chief justice wrote that the Pennsylvania decision “implicated the authority of state courts to apply their own constitutions to election regulations.”
“Different bodies of law and different precedents govern these two situations and require, in these particular circumstances, that we allow the modification of election rules in Pennsylvania but not Wisconsin,” Roberts said.
