{"id":47322,"date":"2026-03-24T12:24:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T19:24:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=47322"},"modified":"2026-03-24T12:24:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T19:24:09","slug":"supreme-court-appears-poised-to-allow-brazen-republican-effort-to-disenfranchise-millions-ahead-of-midterms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2026\/03\/24\/supreme-court-appears-poised-to-allow-brazen-republican-effort-to-disenfranchise-millions-ahead-of-midterms\/","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court Appears Poised to Allow \u2018Brazen Republican Effort to Disenfranchise Millions\u2019 Ahead of Midterms"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"An<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

An employee at the Utah County Election Office puts mail-in ballots into a container to register the vote on November 6, 2018 in Provo, Utah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0(Photo by George Frey\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mail-in voting \u201cis relied upon by nearly one million Americans serving in the military abroad and nearly 50 million Americans living in the US,\u201d noted one expert.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Brett Wilkins<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mar 23, 2026 (CommonDreams.org)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The US Supreme Court<\/a> heard oral arguments Monday in a case in which Republicans<\/a> are trying to ban states from accepting mail-in ballots after Election Day\u2014a development that opponents warned could disenfranchise many of the roughly 50 million Americans who voted by mail in 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Watson v. Republican National Committee<\/em><\/a>challenges Mississippi\u2019s grace period for accepting mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day. While most states require mailed ballots to arrive by that date, 14 states provide extra time ranging from days to weeks. Such grace periods allow the votes of people including US troops stationed overseas, Americans living abroad, disabled people, and others to be counted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The case is partly driven by President Donald Trump\u2019s unfounded<\/a> assertion that mail-in voting is riddled with fraud. Following Trump\u2019s 2020 election loss, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure<\/a> Security Agency\u2014created by the president in 2018\u2014called<\/a> the contest \u201cthe most secure in American history.\u201d Trump promptly fired the head of the agency before leaving office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/embed.bsky.app\/embed\/did:plc:pjiafkey2cokiupsxpswqlk7\/app.bsky.feed.post\/3mhnuiosilk2n?id=19677368157123531&ref_url=https%253A%252F%252Fwww.commondreams.org%252Fnews%252Fscotus-mail-in-voting&colorMode=system<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Legal experts observing Monday\u2019s oral arguments said that some of the six Republican-appointed justices appeared sympathetic to arguments for restricting mail-in voting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

University of Michigan Law School professor Leah Litman said<\/a> on Bluesky that Justices Neil Gorsuch<\/a>, Brett Kavanaugh<\/a>, and Clarence Thomas<\/a> \u201csound like complete MAGA-pilled \u2018absentee voting\/mail in voting is fraudulent\u2019 brains\u201d who are \u201copen to invalidating state laws allowing vote counting after Election Day\u2014and perhaps more voting forms.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey are doing what they often do in these cases with unhinged theories\u2014invent far fetched hypos (could a state allow you to retract your vote, or say your vote is cast when you give your brother a ballot) to distract from what the case is about (is mail-in absentee voting going to be banned),\u201d Litman added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Slate senior writer Mark Joseph Stern said<\/a> on Bluesky that Justice Samuel Alito<\/a> \u201cstrongly implied that vote-by-mail, as practiced in most of the country today, is highly susceptible to fraud,\u201d adding that Gorsuch and Thomas \u201cleaned in that direction as well,\u201d while Justices Amy Coney Barrett<\/a> and John Roberts \u201care harder to read.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSO many questions from the Republican-appointed justices so far having little or nothing to do with the law\u2014they\u2019re venting their evident frustrations about modern election laws that broadly authorize mail voting and fretting that they\u2019re spoiling elections with distrust and fraud,\u201d Stern continued. \u201cReally bad!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s also pretty clear that the Republican-appointed justices do not understand a great deal about how elections are actually administered,\u201d he added. \u201cTheir questions (and especially hypotheticals) are built on weird, paranoid fantasies that do not align with reality.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Others warned of the high likelihood of voter disenfranchisement should the justices limit mailed ballots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWatson v. RNC<\/em> is a brazen Republican effort to disenfranchise millions of Americans seeking to vote in the midterm elections<\/a>,\u201d said Court Accountability co-founder Lisa Graves. \u201cMail-in voting has been part of the American election system since the Civil War, and this method of voting is relied upon by nearly one million Americans serving in the military abroad and nearly 50 million Americans living in the US.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOf course, the hyper-partisan Roberts Court is considering using the power of the nation\u2019s highest court\u2013again\u2013to put its thumb on the scale of justice in ways sought by the Republican Party<\/a>,\u201d Graves continued. \u201cThree Trump appointees on the Supreme Court<\/a> are poised to join three other Republican appointees to side with the radical ruling of a trio of operatives Trump appointed to the Fifth Circuit.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last November, the US Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans struck down<\/a> a Mississippi law that allowed mailed ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted as long as they arrive within five business days, setting up the Supreme Court showdown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cVote-by-mail is a secure and widely used way to participate in our elections,\u201d Stand Up America executive director Christina Harvey said<\/a> Monday. \u201cIt\u2019s a lifeline for military and overseas voters, voters with disabilities, elderly voters, and rural voters living far from their polling places. Nearly one-third of the votes cast in the 2024 election<\/a> were cast by mail, proving just how essential this option has become.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWatson v. RNC<\/em> is part of a broader effort to dismantle voting options ahead of this year\u2019s midterms,\u201d Harvey continued. \u201cAfter pushing congressional Republicans to eliminate vote-by-mail and adopting [United States<\/a> Postal Service] policy changes that could disqualify ballots sent on time, Donald Trump<\/a> and his allies are asking the Supreme Court to finish the job.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf the court rules in their favor, they\u2019ll be making it easier for politicians to hold onto power without answering to voters,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Critics allege that disenfranchisement is the point of policies like limiting mail-in voting or requiring voter ID. Republicans have implied<\/a>\u2014and even admitted<\/a> outright\u2014that these policies help Republicans win elections. During a 2020 interview, Trump said<\/a> he opposed expanding mail-in voting, saying such a move would mean the country would \u201cnever have a Republican elected… again.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last year, Trump signed<\/a> the Orwellian-named \u201cPreserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections\u201d executive order, which critics argued would do just the opposite by making it more difficult for millions of voters to cast their ballots. Among other things, the decree pushes states to require proof of citizenship when voting\u2014a policy that opponents warn disproportionately disenfranchises lower-income individuals, elderly, and adopted people without easy access to their birth certificates and those born at home in rural areas whose birth records were never officially filed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Congressional Republicans are also pushing the\u00a0SAVE Act<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Make Elections Great Again (MEGA) Act<\/a>,<\/a>\u00a0the latter of which was\u00a0described<\/a>\u00a0by one analyst as the \u201cmost dangerous attack on\u00a0voting rights<\/a>\u00a0ever\u201d proposed in Congress. The SAVE Act\u2014which would require anyone registering to vote in federal elections to provide documentary proof of US citizenship\u2014passed in the House<\/a>\u00a0last month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brett Wilkins<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brett Wilkins is a staff writer for Common Dreams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Full Bio ><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An employee at the Utah County Election Office puts mail-in ballots into a container to register the vote on November 6, 2018 in Provo, Utah. \u00a0(Photo by George Frey\/Getty Images) Mail-in voting \u201cis relied upon by nearly one million Americans serving in the military abroad and nearly 50 million Americans… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47322"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47322"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47323,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47322\/revisions\/47323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}