By THE ALASKA STORY
The US Supreme Court ruled this week that a sitting member of Congress has the right to challenge a state’s election rules in court. The case could affect how ballots are counted after Election Day.
In a 7–2 decision, the court held that US Rep. Mike Bost, an Illinois Republican, has legal standing to sue the state of Illinois over its practice of counting mail-in ballots that are postmarked by Election Day but received and tallied up to two weeks later.
The ruling does not decide whether those ballots may lawfully be counted. Instead, it settles a narrower but important question: Whether a sitting congressman and candidate for office is allowed to bring such a lawsuit in the first place.
Bost filed suit in 2022, arguing that Illinois’ late-arriving ballot policy violated federal election law and could dilute the votes of people who cast ballots on or before Election Day. Lower courts dismissed the case, ruling that Bost lacked standing, meaning he did not have a sufficient personal stake to challenge the law.
The Supreme Court reversed that conclusion.
Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said that candidates for office are directly affected by the rules governing how votes are counted in their elections and therefore meet the constitutional requirement for standing.
“A candidate has a personal stake in the rules that govern the counting of votes in his election,” Roberts wrote.
Roberts said candidates can suffer tangible harm when election rules are allegedly violated, including having to spend additional campaign resources or experiencing reputational damage. He also said candidates have a distinct interest in the fairness of the electoral system itself.
“Candidates are not common competitors in the economic marketplace. They seek to represent the people,” Roberts wrote. “And their interest in that prize cannot be severed from their interest in the electoral process.”
The ruling gives Bost the ability to pursue his lawsuit in federal court, but it does not resolve the underlying dispute over whether states may count ballots that arrive after Election Day.
Two justices dissented. Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson argued that the majority had improperly expanded the concept of “standing” and invited courts to become more involved in election disputes.
“In a democratic society like ours, the interest in a fair electoral process is common to all members of the voting public,” Jackson wrote. “The Court thus ignores a core constitutional requirement while unnecessarily thrusting the Judiciary into the political arena.”
