re: Fifth Circuit rules counting ballots that arrive after election day is illegal

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Does that include military ballots? Did they not arrive after the election last year? Feels unfair to not include ballots from people fighting for our country who are overseas and cannot make it to the ballot box back home

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Does that include military ballots?

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I do not recognize the panel decision described by my esteemed dissenting colleagues. With greatest respect, the panel decision did not hold that the States’ “common practice” of “count[ing] timely-cast ballots received after Election Day [] was preempted by federal law.” Post, at 9–10 (Graves, J., dissenting from denial of rehearing en banc). It is absolutely true that many States under different circumstances sometimes accept ballots received after Election Day. See id. at 9 (tallying 28 States). It is also true that federal statutes like the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (“UOCAVA”) or the Help America Vote Act (“HAVA”) authorize such receipt for narrow classes of voters described by federal law. The question presented to the panel was whether, in the absence of any federal statute authorizing any deviation from the uniform Election Day requirement, States nonetheless have freedom to accept ballots for as long as they would like. The panel held no. But it explicitly recognized that numerous States—including many if not all of the ones invoked as bugaboos by the dissenting opinion—obviously can accept ballots after Election Day under circumstances authorized by federal law. See Republican Nat’l Comm. v. Wetzel, 120 F.4th 200, 211–13 (5th Cir. 2024) (explaining that UOCAVA, HAVA, and other federal laws authorizing States to accept ballots received after Election Day show that Congress knows how to make such exceptions to the general federal deadline); compare post, at 9 (ignoring what the panel actually held and asserting the panel held “that ballot receipt laws in at least twenty-eight states and the District of Columbia are preempted by federal law[]”).

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