An election worker processes a ballot at the Clark County Elections Department on Nov. 10, 2022, in Las Vegas.
Gregory Bull/AP
hide title
Switch title
Gregory Bull/AP
Ahead of this year’s election, Republicans have been trying to prevent some states, including the swing state of Nevada, from counting postmarked mail-in ballots that don’t reach election officials until after Election Day.
The legal effort did not go well. But Republican officials say they are committed to addressing the challenges, and in recent days they have appealed to Mississippi’s conservative circuit court in hopes of obtaining a favorable ruling there.
About 20 states and Washington, D.C., accept and count mail-in ballots received after Election Day if they are postmarked on or before Election Day. The rules are designed to accommodate voters who don’t remember to turn in their ballots until Election Day and create wiggle room if the Postal Service has problems.
So far, the Republican National Committee and others have filed ballot return challenges in Nevada, Illinois, Mississippi and North Dakota.
The North Dakota case was dismissed by a court earlier this year. Last month, judges in Mississippi and Nevada also dismissed a lawsuit filed by the Republican National Committee seeking to disqualify ballots arriving after Election Day.
The Republican National Committee argued that the provision allowing votes to be counted after Election Day violated federal law. The party believes it is Congress, not the states, that decides when federal elections end.
“The election should end on Election Day — that’s the law, and voters deserve fair and accurate results on November 5,” Claire Zunk, communications director for the RNC’s Election Integrity Division, told NPR in a statement.
“Counting votes after Election Day in Mississippi and other states threatens election security and undermines voter transparency,” she added.
In the Mississippi case, Republican-appointed federal judge Louis Girolla ruled that state law was not violated when Congress allowed ballots that arrived after Election Day in certain circumstances.
“If a federal statute implicitly permits the post-election receipt of overseas ballots mailed before Election Day, the statute is held not to violate the Election Day statute,” the judge wrote, inferring that Mississippi’s similar statute after the election The receipt is equally harmless.
Now, the Republican National Committee has appealed the Mississippi case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, perhaps the most conservative appeals court in the country.
Zunke told NPR that the Republican National Committee also plans to appeal the Nevada case.
“Instead of letting us fight in court, a liberal judge unreasonably dismissed our case,” Zunk said. “Political parties must be allowed to fight invalid electoral laws that threaten the integrity of our elections.”
The stakes are particularly high in the Nevada case because of the close election results in that state. Additionally, large numbers of voters are now voting by mail thanks to Nevada’s universal mail-in ballot program.
In 2020, Joe Biden defeated then-President Donald Trump in Nevada by about 33,500 votes. During the 2022 midterm elections, in Clark County alone, where Las Vegas is located, state officials said about 40,000 valid ballots were received after Election Day.
Democrats and voting rights advocates call such lawsuits “fringe” and an attempt to undermine U.S. elections. They also say it’s part of a larger effort to shorten the window for voters to return mail-in ballots.
The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee said this summer it was tracking at least 47 bills in 18 states in the 2023 and 2024 legislative sessions that would shorten the ballot return window.
