U.S. Supreme Court docket
SCOTUS will take into account whether or not Illinois congressman has standing to problem ballot-counting legislation
Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Bost of Illinois leaves a gathering of the Home Republican Convention on the Capitol Hill Membership in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 4, 2024. (Photograph by Tom Williams/CQ Roll Name through the Related Press)
A downstate Illinois congressman who needs to problem a state legislation on the counting of mail-in ballots can have his case heard by the U.S. Supreme Court docket.
The Supreme Court docket agreed Monday to think about whether or not Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Bost of Illinois and two Republican electors have standing to problem the legislation. The statute permits the counting of absentee ballots acquired as much as 14 days after an election; if the ballots are postmarked on or earlier than Election Day; or if they’re signed, dated and authorized in the identical time-frame.
Illinois is considered one of 18 states that permit the counting of mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day, Politico stories, citing data from the Nationwide Convention of State Legislatures, a nonpartisan public officers’ affiliation.
Bost and the 2 electors declare that the legislation dilutes the worth of lawfully forged votes, infringing the best to vote and their proper to run for workplace beneath the First Modification and the 14th Modification. Additionally they declare a violation of their statutory rights.
Along with Politico, publications protecting the cert grant embody Bloomberg Law, SCOTUSblog, Law360 and the Chicago Tribune.
The seventh U.S. Circuit Court docket of Appeals at Chicago affirmed dismissal of the case, ruling that the plaintiffs didn’t plead an enough harm in truth that will give them standing to sue beneath Article III of the Structure.
The problem of candidate standing flared within the “hothouse environment surrounding the 2020 federal elections,” in keeping with the cert petition filed for Bost and the electors. Most of the circumstances took an unjustifiably strict view of standing, a part of a latest pattern, the cert petition says. The seventh Circuit determination is a part of the pattern, in keeping with the plaintiffs.
“The flexibility of candidates and events to sue over state legal guidelines affecting their campaigns has been narrowed once more and, certainly, could by no means have been so restricted,” the petition says.
Bost and the electors argued that the coverage precipitated financial hurt as a result of they had been pressured to make use of sources to contest ballots arriving after Election Day and to watch the late vote depend.
However the seventh Circuit mentioned there was no impending harm. Bost, for instance, received his final election with 75% of the vote, the seventh Circuit mentioned.
“And plaintiffs can not manufacture standing by selecting to spend cash to mitigate such conjectural dangers” as an election defeat, the appeals courtroom mentioned.
The cert petition claims that the seventh Circuit’s determination “is contaminated with a lot of errors,” and the Supreme Court docket’s steering “is urgently wanted.”
The case is Bost v. Illinois State Board of Elections.
Bost is represented by Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group.
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