Media: Single Election Day Is ‘Chaos,’ Not Months-Long Mail Balloting

The Supreme Court is weighing the RNC’s argument that accepting mail-in ballots after an election does not align with statutes establishing federal election days. But if you read coverage from the propaganda press, you’d think the justices are on the verge of plunging the country into anarchy rather than deciding whether to restore the uniformity set by Congress.

The high court was hearing arguments in Watson v. RNC, which is a challenge to a Mississippi law that permits mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day to be accepted up to five days after an election. The law was previously found to be unlawful by the 5th Circuit. The Federalist’s Shawn Fleetwood pointed out that several justices had tough questions for Mississippi’s defense counsel, with Justice Samuel Alito aptly pointing out that America does not “have Election Day anymore,” but rather “election month or… election months.”

The New York Times wrote on its X account, “The Supreme Court appears poised to reject a Mississippi state law on late-arriving mail-in ballots, a decision that could upend voting and have sweeping consequences in the midterm elections.”

The Huffington Post’s Brandi Buchman headlined her piece, “Supreme Court Appears Ready To Make Voting Even Harder.”

“Signaling a threat to millions of voters who cast mail-in ballots across the country and overseas, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority appeared ready Monday to bless a recent push by Republicans to restrict how and when late-arriving mail-in ballots are counted,” Buchman wrote.

MSNow’s Jordan Rubin wrote, “The Supreme Court’s mail-in ballot decision could inject chaos into midterm elections.” Rubin said the Supreme Court is “considering endorsing that destabilizing view.” The Washington Post’s Justin Jouvenal wrote that the high court “appeared likely to embrace a conservative challenge to tallying mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day, a move that could upend election procedures in states across the country as voters prepare to cast ballots in the midterm elections.”

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And Politico’s Josh Gerstein wrote: “Supreme Court worries Trump’s attack on late ballots could also threaten early voting.”

But treating a potential ruling in favor of the RNC and DOJ as “upending” or “destabilizing” ignores the very real “chaos” caused by the recent, chaotic “upending” of election rules in 2020.

In Pennsylvania in 2020, for example, then-Secretary of the Commonwealth Kathy Boockvar issued guidance days before the election, ordering segregated late ballots to be counted “as soon as possible upon receipt of the ballots.” Additional guidance from Boockvar also permitted mail-in voters lacking proof of identification to “cure” their ballots up until nine days after the election. A state court later determined she did not have the authority to change the state’s curing deadline.

In 2021, Nevada officially extended the deadline for which counties could accept mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day to four days after Election Day. This law followed a similar pandemic-related measure that temporarily extended the mail-in ballot deadline to seven days after Election Day in 2020. As The Federalist previously reported, Nevada also permits mail ballots to be counted even if they are missing a postmark, so long as they arrive by the third day after Election Day. As The Federalist’s Matt Kittle reported, in Nevada’s Clark County, nearly 40,000 mail-in ballots that arrived after Election Day in 2022 were counted.

In simpler terms, Election “Day” now means different things for different states. There can be no uniform Election Day if each state has a different timeline. Such real chaos is hard to ignore.

The propaganda press’s reporting on the Supreme Court hearing is deliberate. Such coverage wrongly normalizes significant delays in election results which, up until the pandemic, were abnormal. By ignoring or downplaying the actual “chaos” caused by election law changes in 2020 and preemptively painting any decision restoring a uniform Election Day as a “threat,” the media is conditioning voters to treat the Supreme Court as illegitimate or at least suspect if it declines to rubber-stamp problematic pandemic-era voting expansions.

This fearmongering undermines the many Americans who recognize the dangers of accepting mail-in ballots after Election Day. A poll conducted this month on behalf of the Honest Elections Project found a majority of likely voters said counting ballots received after Election Day “endanger[s] public trust in elections,” with 79 percent of Republicans and 44 percent of Democrats saying such a practice “makes it easier to cheat.” Majorities of both Republicans and Democrats surveyed said requiring ballots to be received by Election Day “makes elections more secure.”

Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2