An election integrity group is suing North Dakota to block its law that allows the state to accept and count mail-in ballots so long as they arrive within 13 days after Election Day.
There are reportedly 18 states, plus the District of Columbia, that accept mailed ballots that are delivered after Election Day. Congress created an exception to the law for military and overseas voters, whose mailed-in ballots are counted even if they arrive after Election Day.
If the new federal lawsuit is successful, it could lead to other lawsuits that aim to compel election officials in other states to stop accepting ballots that come in after Election Day.
Democrats vigorously oppose efforts to curtail mail-in voting but then-President Donald Trump criticized the practice on Sept. 23, 2020.
Mr. Trump said at the time that mail-in “ballots are out of control.”
“You know it. And you know who knows it better than anybody else? The Democrats know it better than anybody else.”
The next day Mr. Trump said that voting by mail was “a whole big scam.”
Election ‘Lawlessness’
Although states run elections within their borders, federal law mandates that there be a single national Election Day, according to the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), the group that filed the lawsuit (pdf) on July 7.
“Election Day has ceased to be a day,” J. Christian Adams, president of PILF, said in a statement. Adams was previously an attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice.
“Instead, we have election month because states accept ballots that arrive days and even weeks after Election Day,” Mr. Adams said. “PILF is fighting to end this lawlessness and restore the ‘day’ in Election Day.”
Congress enacted a single statutory Election Day in order to address chaos and protracted uncertainty surrounding elections in the 1800s, the legal complaint says.
Rep. Benjamin Franklin Butler of Massachusetts, a Democrat who became a Republican and then later switched back to Democrat, sponsored the legislation in 1871.
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