Supreme Court to review Illinois mail-in voting lawsuit

The Supreme Court will hear arguments Wednesday in a case over rules allowing mail-in ballots to be counted in Illinois even if they are received after Election Day, a practice allowed in many Democratic-led states and repeatedly challenged by Republicans.

At issue in this case is the specific question of whether a federal elected official can sue to prevent a state from counting such ballots.

Under Illinois law, ballots postmarked on Election Day are counted if they are received up to 14 days later.

Rep. Mike Bost, a six-term Republican who represents an upstate Illinois district, and two constituents filed the lawsuit in May 2022, arguing that the late voting rule is superseded by laws enacted by Congress setting the time for federal elections.

The lawsuit was one of several challenges by President Trump’s allies to challenge guidelines for mail-in voting, which he has long attacked and falsely blamed for his 2020 election defeat as more people voted by mail during the pandemic.

It is also the first in a series of voting rights and election-related disputes that the justices are scheduled to hear this term, marking the start of an important year for the court and the mechanisms of democracy.

Although the question posed in Mr. Bost’s case is narrow, a victory for Mr. Bost could pave the way for other similar challenges, including a Mississippi case pending in court aimed at determining whether a five-day post-election grace period for late mail-in ballots violates federal law.

In July 2023, a federal judge dismissed the case, finding that Mr. Bost had not demonstrated that he had standing to bring the suit, a minimum legal requirement that Mr. Bost demonstrate that he suffered direct harm from the law.

Mr. Bost said he suffered a financial cost because he had to campaign for two weeks after the election to monitor the receipt and counting of ballots. He also argued that as a candidate he had a particular interest in ensuring the vote count was accurate.

A divided three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit disagreed, finding that Mr. Bost was not required to conduct post-election surveillance. Any financial harm, the judges concluded, was self-inflicted.

Mr. Bost appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that his case represented “an opportunity for the court to provide lower courts and litigants with much-needed guidance on the quality of candidates, outside of high-stakes emergency post-election litigation where these questions commonly arise.”

In his November 2024 motion asking the court to take up the case, Mr. Bost argued that “the ability of candidates and parties to bring lawsuits against state laws affecting their campaigns has been reduced again and, in fact, may never have been more restricted.”

He claimed that lower courts had unfairly dismissed the case by viewing his likelihood of winning the election as relevant to his status, arguing that judges should not “try to predict election results” but rather focus on whether a state election law “inflicts real costs” on a campaign.

The justices announced in June that they would review the case solely on the specific question of whether he could sue.

In a brief to the court, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul argued that Mr. Bost failed to demonstrate that he was harmed by the state’s election law.

To challenge such laws, Mr. Raoul wrote, a political candidate “must demonstrate concrete and particular harm attributable to a contested election rule, not just express an objection to that rule.”

In response, Mr. Bost’s lawyers argued that the political candidates had “standing to challenge the rules that govern the time, place and manner of their elections” and that they had “a unique and concrete interest in the rules that govern the elections in which they devote enormous resources.”