https://www.wsj.com/articles/supreme-court-ballot-wisdom-11603840218?mod=opinion_lead_pos3
The campaign to stigmatize the Supreme Court is already under way, even before new Justice Amy Coney Barrett hears a case. Witness the media hyperventilating after the Justices ruled 5-3 late Monday that Wisconsin’s Nov. 3 ballot deadline must remain in place.
The order sustained an appellate-court ruling that had halted a federal judge’s intrusion saying ballots mailed on time could be counted even if they arrived six days late. The judge claimed Covid-19 as the excuse, but Badger State law says absentee ballots must arrive by Election Day.
Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh wrote opinions that should help educate lower-court judges who think they can rewrite state election law on election eve. Justice Kavanaugh cited the Court’s precedents that “recognize a basic tenet of election law: When an election is close at hand, the rules of the road should be clear and settled.”
Justice Gorsuch added that Wisconsin has gone to extraordinary lengths to take account of Covid, including sending all registered voters an absentee-ballot application and return envelope in the summer that they have been able to return since September
If Wisconsin’s Nov. 3 deadline can be thrown out due to Covid and despite the many avenues for casting a vote, Justice Gorsuch wrote, then “what about the identical deadlines in 30 other States?” Why bump the deadline six days and not 10 days? Other judges, he continued, might well “unfurl the precinct maps and decide whether States should add polling places, revise their hours, rearrange the voting booths,” and so forth.