The rules of the political game are important to MAGA Republicans, who have won the popular vote in two of the seven presidential elections since 2000, but have won four of those elections because of the arcane Electoral College.
And have majorities in Congress because of gerrymandering at the state level in the U.S. House, and the way the Framers give every state, including those barely bigger than a phone booth, two seats in the U.S. Senate.
Even with those baked-in structural advantages, they rarely, and barely, win, so their focus is turning to keeping people from voting at all.
I mean, seriously, Donald Trump literally said today we shouldn’t even have elections this year, but they can’t do that.
Not yet.
“Many states, including Virginia, have adopted sensible policies to allow mail-in ballots to be counted so long as they are postmarked no later than Election Day,” U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine and U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, both D-Va., wrote in a brief filed in the case of Watson v. Republican National Committee, a landmark mail-in voting case that will be argued before the U.S. Supreme Court later this year.
In 2024, the Republican National Committee challenged a Mississippi law that allows ballots postmarked by Election Day to be received up to five days after Election Day, arguing that this law violates federal law setting the timing of elections.
If the Fifth Circuit appeals court ruling in the case is affirmed by the Supreme Court, vote-by-mail in more than a dozen states – including Virginia – will be thrown into disarray, as huge numbers of voters, particularly rural, military and overseas voters, could be disenfranchised.
The amicus brief comes days after the Trump regime’s latest attempt to suppress mail-in voting. Closures and consolidation of U.S. Postal Service facilities, as well as a recent rule change by the USPS, will result in mail being postmarked less frequently on the day it is received.
As a result, mail-in ballots received by the USPS near or on Election Day could receive a delayed postmark and be invalidated.