The Supreme Court came to the opposite conclusion, however, in North Carolina and Pennsylvania, allowing both states to count ballots received during a limited window after Election Day.
But even the positive rulings expanding affirming the right to count ballots received after Election Day aren’t safe. After the Supreme Court issued a split 4-4 decision on Pennsylvania’s mail-in ballot rule earlier this month, Republicans threatened to bring yet another challenge after Coney Barrett was seated on the bench, hoping that the conservative judge would be a tie-breaking vote. The Supreme Court declined to fast-track a review of its earlier ruling but left open the possibility the case could be revisited after Election Day.
Pennsylvania isn’t the only fight that’s potentially brewing. In Minnesota, the GOP won a challenge Thursday in the 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals that will mark as late any ballots delivered by mail to election officials after 8 p.m. on November 3. It’s not clear whether the segregated ballots will ultimately count toward the vote total or whether or not the ruling will be appealed, but the clock is ticking.
On Twitter, Senator Amy Klobuchar warned Minnesotans who haven’t voted already to turn in their ballots at an election center or drop box to avoid being invalidated, but the truth is that many voters may not receive the message at the 11th hour and others, such as low-income voters or the elderly, may not have transportation access to do so. That is another reason that Democratic hopes ride on not just a “blue wave” in the election but a “blue landslide”: Biden supporters have to cast enough votes in person to make up for any ballots that are negated through GOP voter suppression, especially given that Democrats are more likely to say they are voting by mail in 2020.
Democrats simply need every vote they can get as soon as they can get it to prevent democracy’s erosion under at least four more years of a Trump administration, with the president repeatedly “joking” that he hopes to serve a third term. Anyone familiar with the man in the Oval Office knows that for being a clown, he rarely kids around.
But if the situation seems increasingly desperate, the most troubling aspect is that it didn’t have to be this way.
After House Democrats passed a sweeping bill to restore parts of the Voting Rights Act last year, the legislation was stonewalled by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Following the Supreme Court’s ideologically split 5-4 ruling in the 2013 case Shelby v. Holder, key portions of the Voting Rights Act were voided, immediately ushering in an era that has since resulted in strict state voter ID laws, the closure of hundreds of polling places, and numerous states passing voting restrictions, particularly those with the highest African-American voter turnout and Latinx population growth.
As Politico reported, the Voting Rights Advancement Act would “update the formula used to determine which states must preclear their voter registration practices, require public notice for voting registration changes, and allow the attorney general to send federal observers anywhere in the U.S.” It would also require the pre-clearance of changes to election rules in a collection of states, most of them in the South, where Black voters have been historically disenfranchised at the ballot box.
But if 2020 is any indication, Republicans will continue broadening their efforts to make it more difficult to vote not only in this election but all future elections, too. Turning out to vote for Democrats in large numbers will decrease the likelihood of an election stolen by the Supreme Court, but we can’t shrug off voter suppression as a phenomenon that only targets people of color — it will continue to affect every single U.S. election until we pass sweeping reforms in every state across the country. The state of LGBTQ+ rights, as well as protections for all marginalized groups, is potentially at stake.
Although Democrats are fired up and ready to beat Republicans by bringing their friends and everyone they know to the polls, the truth is that democracy shouldn’t come down to a series of last-minute hail marys in the closing minutes. You should worry about the fate of our country, but no one should have to be concerned about whether they will get to have a say in it.
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