SCOTUS Rules Congressman Has Standing To Challenge Mail-In Voting Rules
The U.S. Supreme Court delivered a significant victory for election integrity advocates on Wednesday, reviving a Republican congressman’s legal challenge to an Illinois absentee ballot law and affirming that candidates have the right to question how votes are counted in their own races.
In a 7–2 decision, the Court ruled that Rep. Michael Bost (R-Ill.) has legal standing to challenge an Illinois statute that allows mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day to be received and counted for up to two weeks afterward. The ruling sends the case back to lower courts after it was previously dismissed on procedural grounds.
Chief Justice John Roberts authored the majority opinion, rejecting the argument that candidates must show direct electoral harm before being allowed into court. Instead, Roberts emphasized that candidates have a legitimate stake in the rules governing elections themselves.
“Candidates have a concrete and particularized interest in the rules that govern the counting of votes in their elections, regardless whether those rules harm their electoral prospects or increase the cost of their campaigns,” Roberts wrote. “Their interest extends to the integrity of the election—and the democratic process by which they earn or lose the support of the people they seek to represent.”
Bost originally filed the lawsuit in 2022, arguing that Illinois’ ballot-receipt deadline conflicts with federal law establishing a uniform Election Day for federal offices. Lower courts dismissed the case, concluding that Bost lacked standing to sue.
The Supreme Court disagreed, signaling a broader willingness to allow challenges to election procedures that critics argue stretch Election Day into an extended counting period.
Two liberal justices dissented, warning that the ruling could open the floodgates to election-related lawsuits, CNN reported. Legal analysts on the left echoed those concerns, suggesting the decision could encourage similar challenges nationwide as disputes over voting rules continue.
Illinois officials had argued that permitting the lawsuit to proceed would burden election administrators and disrupt long-standing voting practices. Bost, however, did not allege fraud in his filings. While President Donald Trump has been an outspoken critic of mail-in voting and delayed ballot counting, the Illinois law at issue dates back to 2005.
CNN Supreme Court analyst and Georgetown University law professor Steve Vladeck criticized the ruling, warning of legal uncertainty after future elections.
“Today’s ruling could open the door to a lot of litigation—and potential chaos – on the far side of the next contested election,” Vladeck said.
“If candidates will generally have standing to challenge how votes are counted in any election they’re running in, that could dramatically expand the horizon of legal challenges that can be brought challenging even those elections that were completely by the book,” he added, “potentially injecting more uncertainty in those critical days and weeks after Election Day going forward.”
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, issued a sharp dissent, arguing that the Court’s decision could destabilize election administration nationwide.
“By carving out a bespoke rule for candidate-plaintiffs — granting them standing ‘to challenge the rules that govern the counting of votes,’ simply and solely because they are ‘candidates’ for office — the court now complicates and destabilizes both our standing law and America’s electoral processes,” Jackson wrote.
Supporters of the ruling counter that federal law and the Constitution clearly establish an Election Day—not an open-ended election “cycle” that can stretch weeks beyond when polls close. They argue that allowing candidates to challenge vote-counting rules is essential to maintaining public trust in elections.
During oral arguments in October, Justice Brett Kavanaugh highlighted that Bost’s financial and campaign-related burdens tied to the law were sufficient to establish standing. Illinois officials, by contrast, argued candidates should be required to show that a voting rule significantly increases their risk of losing an election.
Chief Justice Roberts dismissed that standard as unworkable, warning it would force courts into political guesswork. He described such a requirement as a “potential disaster” that would turn judges into election forecasters, according to CNN.
The decision marks a notable shift in election-law jurisprudence—and a clear signal that the Supreme Court is prepared to scrutinize voting rules that blur the line between Election Day and prolonged ballot counting.