{"id":2621323,"date":"2026-06-30T07:45:01","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T11:45:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/alito-nuking-single-day-elections-opens-pandoras-box-of-voter-fraud\/"},"modified":"2026-06-30T07:50:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T11:50:10","slug":"alito-nuking-single-day-elections-opens-pandoras-box-of-voter-fraud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/alito-nuking-single-day-elections-opens-pandoras-box-of-voter-fraud\/","title":{"rendered":"Alito: Nuking Single-Day Elections Opens &#8216;Pandora&#8217;s Box&#8217; Of Voter Fraud"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">20<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Falito-nuking-single-day-elections-opens-pandoras-box-of-voter-fraud%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2621323&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>Justice Samuel alito authored notable majority opinions this term, notably dissenting against the Supreme Court\u2019s decision to allow mail-in ballots received days after Election Day. The recent 5-4 ruling permitted Mississippi to count ballots arriving after Election Day, with the majority ignoring established federal statutes, ancient practices, and legal precedent that designate election Day as the specific date for voting. Alito emphasized that legally, \u201celection day\u201d means the day votes are cast and in the hands of officials before polls close, highlighting that post-election counting can undermine election integrity.<\/p>\n<p>Alito warned that extending the counting period increases opportunities for voter manipulation and fraud, citing sources including a 2005 bipartisan committee that identified absentee voting as a significant source of potential voter fraud.He also drew historical parallels, such as Lyndon Johnson\u2019s 1948 Senate victory, which was tainted by late-arriving votes.Modern examples include closely contested elections in Minnesota and North Carolina where late ballots flipped results.<\/p>\n<p>The decision raises numerous concerns and questions about election procedures, such as the legality of counting ballots without clear deadlines, the handling of ballots delivered by third parties or recalled after mailing, and what constitutes a final vote. Alito argued that these ambiguities threaten to erode public confidence in election fairness and pose a \u201cPandora\u2019s box\u201d of legal and logistical challenges for states implementing voting laws.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has authored numerous <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/tag\/samuel-alito\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">high-impact majority opinions<\/a> this term, but the Supreme Court\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3YuVZYV\" >ill-advised decision allowing mail-<\/a>in ballots to be counted days after Election Day gave him the opportunity to nuke that premise from orbit in a dissent.<\/p>\n<p>Monday\u2019s 5-4 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.supremecourt.gov\/opinions\/25pdf\/24-1260_g3cn.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">decision<\/a>, in which Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2026\/06\/29\/scotus-says-vote-by-mail-elections-can-extend-five-days-past-election-day\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">joined<\/a> the three liberals on the court, allowed Mississippi to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/nevada-allowed-to-continue-counting-ballots-received-after-election-day-judge-rules\/\" title=\"Nevada allowed to continue ... received after ..., judge rules\">continue counting ballots received<\/a> after the federally defined Election Day, offering little by way of defining what an \u201celection\u201d actually is.<\/p>\n<p>Alito took the opportunity to inform the Court\u2019s majority what the term \u201celection\u201d actually means in law, and explain how their <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/dems-find-judge-to-block-more-of-trumps-election-law-order\/\" title=\"Dems Find Judge To Block More Of Trump&#039;s Election Law Order\">decision undermines election integrity<\/a> and the perceptions that U.S. elections are free and fair.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Election Day Means Election Day<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Plain and simple: \u201cFederal law designates \u2018the Tuesday next after the first Monday in November\u2019 as \u2018election day,\u2019 3 U. S. C. \u00a721, and provides that elections for federal office must be held on that date,\u201d Alito wrote. There is not much getting around that, but the majority rejected federal statute, history, and precedent to determine that ballots can trickle in and be counted well after Election Day.<\/p>\n<p>The act of voting is a member of the electorate both choosing his preferred candidates and that vote being submitted to the custody of an election official. That means a ballot needs to be in the hands of an election official before the polls are closed in order for someone to have actually \u201cvoted\u201d \u2014 and statute is unambiguous as to when that is.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Court \u2026 concludes that the election-day statutes merely require that each individual cast a vote on or before election day. But if that is all that the election-day statutes require, there is no sense in which the electorate as a whole can be seen as making its choice on election day,\u201d Alito wrote. \u201cRather, the electorate\u2019s choice would be made piecemeal over an extended period prior to election day, and that prospect is blatantly contrary to what the election-day statutes demand.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Mail-In Ballots Appear Fraudulent Because They\u2019re The Most Fraudulent<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Alito quoted Justice Brett Kavanaugh noting that \u201cwhen \u2018thousands of absentee ballots flow in after election day and potentially flip the result of an election,\u2019 \u2018charges of a rigged election can explode.&#8217;\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But he also went further, explaining how numerous sources have shown how \u201callowing absentee ballots to pour in over the days and weeks after election day, by which point preliminary election returns are being publicly reported, creates greater opportunity for fraud and risks further undermining the public\u2019s confidence in election integrity.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The entire chain of custody that maintains any semblance of election integrity is necessarily broken down with absentee voting. It is difficult for officials to verify who has requested and completed a ballot and there is a \u201cgreater opportunity for voter manipulation,\u201d he wrote, stating that the Court\u2019s decision \u201ccompounds these vulnerabilities.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Alito also cited the 2005 bipartisan election integrity committee helmed by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker as one of multiple sources to find that \u201cabsentee voting was \u2018the largest source of potential voter fraud\u2019 in American elections.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Finding Late Ballots Is How Lyndon Johnson Stole His Senate Election<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Alito laid out a not-so-hypothetical scenario where a presidential election was hanging on the results of a single state, and that the post-Election Day vote showed one candidate with a large lead. If that state allowed ballots to be counted well after Election Day, and suddenly saw over the course of the next days and weeks a diminishing lead, it could ultimately lead to a flip.<\/p>\n<p>Finding votes somewhere would be the name of the game in an election like that, just as it was in President Lyndon Johnson\u2019s 1948 election to the U.S. Senate, which was the defining moment that made his political career, as Alito pointed out in a footnote:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>An acclaimed biography of former President Lyndon Johnson detailed how the Senate campaign that propelled his political career was marred by late-arriving votes that changed the outcome of the race. In 1948, Johnson eked out a razor-thin victory over his primary opponent in a runoff, all but guaranteeing that he would win the general election in Texas. Johnson\u2019s victory was made possible through the election-flipping addition of 202 votes to the tally several days after polls had closed. Two hundred of those late-arriving votes were cast for Johnson, who won the race by just 87 votes. In the decades since, weighty evidence has come to light casting serious doubt on those votes\u2019 legitimacy.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>There are more modern examples of a similar phenomenon as well. The 2008 election of former Sen. Al Franken, a Democrat from Minnesota who secured a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate for President Barack Obama\u2019s first years in office. As The Federalist\u2019s Editor-In-Chief Mollie Hemingway pointed out in <a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/books\/rigged-how-the-media-big-tech-and-the-democrats-seized-our-elections\/9781684512591\"><em>Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections<\/em><\/a>, what looked like an Election Day win for Republican incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman slowly turned to a loss after Democrat election fixer Marc Elias got ahold of the ballot counting.<\/p>\n<p>In 2024, the North Carolina Supreme Court <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2025\/05\/06\/federal-judge-decides-democrat-wins-nc-high-court-race-despite-thousands-of-questionable-ballots\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">election<\/a> likewise saw about 10,000 ballots trickle in over the course of weeks to flip the Election Day results.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>\u2018Pandora\u2019s Box\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>In addition to the direct concerns to elections coming from the Court\u2019s decision, Alito provided a litany of questions and concerns the decision would create, but does not attempt to answer:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Not only is today\u2019s decision inconsistent with statutory text, legal context, historical practice, and precedent; it also threatens to produce lamentable consequences. The majority\u2019s holding spawns a slurry of troubling election-law questions and risks further undermining Americans\u2019 confidence in election integrity.<\/p>\n<p>The majority holds that a State complies with the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/supreme-court-to-review-legality-of-counting-mail-ballots-arriving-after-election-day\/\" title=\"Supreme ... to review legality of counting mail ... arriving after ...\">federal election-day statutes<\/a> if it requires that ballots are postmarked by election day and received within five days after. But this ostensibly simple holding obfuscates the many unsettling questions that the majority\u2019s position entails. For instance, do the federal election-day statutes impose any ballot-receipt deadlines? Mississippi counts absentee ballots that arrive up to five days after the federal election day, but nothing in the majority opinion turns on that 5-day duration. Indeed, some States will count mail-in ballots that arrive as late as 21 days after election day. If the \u201celection\u201d is complete when voters fill out their ballots and send them on their way, may States eliminate ballot-receipt deadlines entirely? It appears that the only federal backstops for ballot receipt are the date when newly elected Representatives and Senators must report for their swearing in and the date when Presidential electors must cast their votes.<\/p>\n<p>Next, would it suffice under federal law if a State authorized voters to tender their ballots to any third party by election day? Mississippi counts late-arriving absentee ballots only if they are sent using the Postal Service or a common carrier. But nothing in the election-day statutes gives those entities special treatment. Could a State therefore count late-arriving ballots if they are delivered by some other intermediary? How about a relative of the voter? A helpful neighbor? An Uber driver who agrees to serve as a courier? A \u201cballot harvester\u201d affiliated with a political party or interest group?<\/p>\n<p>May States use something other than a ballot\u2019s postmark to determine when someone voted? Mississippi requires that an absentee ballot be postmarked on or before election day, but other States do not. Do those States\u2019 laws comply with the election-day statutes? What happens if a voter deposits a ballot in a U. S. mailbox on election day after the last mail pickup for the day?<\/p>\n<p>What happens if a courier offers a recall service? The majority\u2019s rule apparently rests on the notion that a voter has made a \u201cfinal selection of an officeholder\u201d once the voter tenders a ballot to the party who will deliver it. But the Postal Service allows its customers to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/alito-warns-late-arriving-ballot-ruling-may-undermine-election-confidence\/\" title=\"Alito warns ...-arriving ... ruling may undermine election confidence\">recall mail mid-transit<\/a>, as do many private parcel services. Given that fact, is a voter\u2019s \u201cselection\u201d truly \u201cfinal\u201d when he or she puts a ballot in the mailbox? The majority dodges this question, offering the passing suggestion that Mississippi\u2019s statute would be preempted only insofar as it allows voters to recall their ballots. May the Fifth Circuit hold as much on remand? Must state law expressly prohibit voters from using recall services? Do the Postal Service\u2019s or FedEx\u2019s mail-recall policies violate the election-day statutes as applied to absentee ballots?<\/p>\n<p>For state legislatures trying to understand what the election-day statutes allow, the majority\u2019s decision opens Pandora\u2019s box.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<hr>\n<p>      Breccan F. Thies is the White House correspondent for The Federalist. He is a co-recipient of the 2025 Dao Prize for Excellence in Investigative Journalism. As an investigative journalist, he previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Alito opposes counting ballots after Election Day<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":179,"featured_media":2621324,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Copy-of-Copy-of-Copy-of-Copy-of-Copy-of-Copy-of-Copy-of-Copy-of-CORRECT-Twitter-template-1-31.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33651],"tags":[4430,32644,33764,32275,32645],"class_list":["post-2621323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-western-journal","tag-alito","tag-election-integrity","tag-election-litigation","tag-supreme-court","tag-voter-fraud"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Copy-of-Copy-of-Copy-of-Copy-of-Copy-of-Copy-of-Copy-of-Copy-of-CORRECT-Twitter-template-1-31.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2621323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/179"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2621323"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2621323\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2621327,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2621323\/revisions\/2621327"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2621324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2621323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2621323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2621323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}