Supreme Court rules that main-in votes received after the deadline won’t count
The US Supreme Court ruled late yesterday on what could be a decisive factor in the US election. They said the mail-in votes post-marked on or before the election wouldn’t count if received after Nov 3.
A district court had mandated a six-day extension to retrieve slow-arriving mail but the 5-3 decision along ideological lines rejected that. In writing for the majority, Kavanaugh said that “suspicions of impropriety” will result of “absentee ballots flow in after election day and potentially flip the results of an election.”
Kagan dissented and said there is no result to ‘flip’ until all valid votes are counted and that nothing would be more “suspicious” or “improper” than refusing to tally votes once the clock strike midnight.
In a sign of what could be to come, Trump latched onto the idea today and said:
“It would be very very proper and very nice if a winner were declared on November 3rd, instead of counting ballots for two weeks, which is totally inappropriate and I don’t believe that that’s by our laws. I don’t believe that. So we’ll see what happens.”
If Trump tries to declare an early victory and it ends up in the Supreme Court, today’s decision is a sign of what’s to come.
Even if he’s well-behind on election night or afterwards, the market will be hesitant to move until he concedes. There’s a material risk that he never concedes.