One in five mail-in voters admitted to cheating in the 2020 election, so it might just make sense to rein in the process a bit. Enter the Supreme Court, which yesterday considered arguments in Watson v. Republican National Committee, a case involving a Mississippi law that permits counting mail-in ballots up to five days after Election Day, provided they are postmarked on or before Election Day. Another 13 states — including California, New York, and Texas — and DC have similar laws. Fifteen more states have extended deadlines for military voters and voters abroad.

It seems that at least some of the Court’s conservative majority is skeptical of Mississippi’s law, though a ruling won’t come until late June. A U.S. district court upheld the law, but the Fifth Circuit Court reversed that ruling.

Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution sets the standard: “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.”

2 U.S. Code § 7 says, “The Tuesday next after the 1st Monday in November, in every even numbered year, is established as the day for the election.” That is the relevant law the justices are considering — specifically, whether ballots that arrive and are counted after Election Day run afoul of that law.

Obviously, some voters have perfectly valid reasons to vote by absentee ballot. President Donald Trump just did so in Florida’s election, much to the amusement of Leftmedia outlets keen to point out his supposed hypocrisy for having called mail-in voting “corrupt as hell,” among other things. But Democrats exploited COVID to launch their bulk-mail ballot fraud strategy, and Trump’s complaints about that are not without justification.

According to The Wall Street Journal, “In the 2024 general election, more than 750,000 ballots were mailed by Election Day and arrived shortly afterward in states with general postelection grace periods.” Well over 150 million ballots were cast that year, but roughly a third were cast by mail. Both the 2016 and 2020 elections were decided by margins far smaller than 750,000.

Mail-in voting has gotten completely out of hand. Frankly, early voting has, too.

“We don’t have Election Day anymore,” observed Justice Samuel Alito. “We have election month, or we have election months.” We have lamented exactly this for years.

Chief Justice John Roberts appeared conflicted because of early voting, however. Asking U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer to explain the difference between early voting and late counting, Roberts said, “It seems to me you’re not saying anything other than, ‘That’s different.’”

It is different. Early voting is done in person, ideally with a photo ID (hint, hint to the Senate). Mail-in ballots are, as I stated at the outset, open to fraud. Jimmy Carter agreed when he led a 2005 commission tasked with evaluating election integrity.

Justice Neil Gorsuch gutted Roberts’s approach, asking, “How about a time-stamp video showing that I voted on Election Day? Here I am filling out my ballot, and then my brother or maybe some aggregator of ballots brings it in a week or three later — that’s got to be OK too, doesn’t it?” Mississippi’s attorney responded basically, That’s different.

Justice Samuel Alito asked about the validity of laws “for the purpose of combating fraud or the appearance of fraud.” He noted, “Confidence in election outcomes can be seriously undermined if the apparent outcome of the election on the day after the polls close is radically flipped by the acceptance later of a big stash of ballots.” Even if every one of those ballots was properly cast, signed, and verified, many folks will inherently question their legitimacy, which undermines the “democracy” Democrats are always whining about.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh made that point, saying, “If the apparent winner the morning after the election ends up losing due to late-arriving ballots, charges of a rigged election could explode.”

As for the Court’s three left-wing justices, they did what they often do in such cases — plead judicial restraint. That’s never their tack when the policy suits them, but never mind that now.

“The people who should decide this issue are not the courts, but Congress, the states, and Congress,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor asserted.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson effectively told Paul Clement, the lawyer representing the RNC, the same thing: “The worry is that you want this court to decide the case rather than have Congress do it.”

Election integrity is of paramount importance if we’re going to keep the Republic our Founders bequeathed to us. The most effective way to guard that integrity is, with very modest exceptions, to cast ballots in person on Election Day with a photo ID. Anything short of that is asking for trouble.

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