When the Supreme Court convened Monday to open a new term, there will be 29 days until Election Day. Will the justices once again find themselves in the middle of the presidential race?
The high court could be called to resolve emergency disputes over ballot-access measures or vote-counting rules. After the election, any challenge to the outcome would likely end up with the justices.
Either scenario would provide another politically explosive chapter for the court, which is controlled by a 6-3 conservative majority. It would come at a time when public trust in the court is on the decline, Politico reports..
The justices have agreed to hear 40 cases this term. An argument is set for Tuesday on the Biden administration’s effort to ban “ghost guns,” which are assembled from kits purchased over the internet and are often untraceable.
Many election-related imbroglios wait in the wings. “They had to make space for the possibility that there would be election cases that they would have to address,” said Georgetown University law professor Irv Gornstein, who spent a decade arguing cases for the federal government at the Supreme Court. “Even if it turns out there are none, I think that they have to have that on their mind.”
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Politico describes are eight ways the Supreme Court could get pulled back into the election.
In one of them, since before the last presidential election, civil rights groups, election boards and the Pennsylvania Republican Party have been duking it out in court over what should happen to mail-in ballots that voters misdate or fail to date. The issue remains contentious, with a sharply divided Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling in 2022 that such ballots should not be counted, but several other courts holding that a missing or erroneous date isn’t significant enough to warrant casting aside a ballot.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court agreed Saturday to hear on an expedited basis a dispute about varying policies on voters’ opportunities to “cure” problems that could disqualify their mail-in ballots, like failing to use an inner security envelope used to keep cast ballots anonymous.
If another dispute arises over the Jan. 6 congressional certification of the election results, “There could be arguments that, to my mind at least, are not completely frivolous that Congress does not, in fact, have authority over presidential elections,” said Daniel Tokaji, dean of the University of Wisconsin law school. “I don’t think they’re right, but I don’t think those arguments are crazy, either.”
He added, “I don’t feel like this court is particularly anxious to resolve another presidential election, which isn’t to say there might not be one or two or three justices who would be,."
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