The US Supreme Court has revived a lawsuit by Republican Congressman Mike Bost challenging an Illinois law that permits mail-in ballots to be counted if received up to two weeks after election day, provided they are postmarked by the deadline. The 7-2 decision, authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, allows Bost to proceed with his claim that the law unconstitutionally extends the election period.
Chief Justice Roberts wrote that candidates have a concrete interest in the rules governing vote counting, regardless of whether those rules harm their electoral prospects or increase campaign costs. The ruling overturned lower court decisions that had dismissed Bost's suit for lack of standing, arguing he had not suffered a specific injury.
In dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, argued that political candidates should be held to the same injury requirements as other litigants. Jackson warned that the court's decision creates a special rule for candidates, destabilising standing law and electoral processes.
The case, seen by Trump-aligned conservatives as a route to challenge mail-in voting, centres on whether a federal candidate has standing to sue over election laws. Sixteen states and several US territories count late-arriving mail ballots if postmarked by election day. Republicans have increasingly targeted mail-in voting, with Trump issuing an executive order in March directing action against states that count such ballots after election day.
