After Federal Judge Rejects Challenge to Mississippi’s Mail-in Ballot Receipt Deadline, RNC Appeals to Ultra-Conservative 5th Circuit
The Republican National Committee (RNC) promptly appealed its lawsuit challenging Mississippi’s mail-in ballot receipt deadline just a few days after a Republican-appointed federal judge dismissed the challenge as meritless.
The case is now before the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — the most conservative federal appeals court in the country.
In a ruling handed down last Sunday, George W. Bush-appointed Judge Louis Guirola upheld a Mississippi election law that allows for the counting of mail-in ballots up to five days after an election so long as they are postmarked on or before Election Day.
Guirola concluded that the state’s post-election ballot receipt deadline comports with federal law and the U.S. Constitution, rejecting the RNC’s argument that the law effectively extends Election Day and leads to “valid ballots” being diluted by allegedly “illegitimate” ones.
Voting rights advocates hailed the ruling as a major win for Mississippians who vote by mail and rely on the state’s commonsense deadline to protect against disenfranchisement — especially in light of issues like postal delays.
The RNC’s appeal comes as no surprise after the committee’s election integrity director, Gineen Bresso, last week professed the organization’s intention to seek reversal by the 5th Circuit in a statement to Mississippi Today.
Rob McDuff — the director of the Impact Litigation Initiative at the Mississippi Center for Justice — previously explained to Democracy Docket that the RNC’s decision to file a ballot deadline challenge in the GOP stronghold of Mississippi was most likely explained as an act of forum shopping aimed at establishing a favorable precedent for use in other cases.
According to McDuff, the RNC intended for the case to inevitably end up before the ultra-conservative 5th Circuit, which has a track record of hostility towards voting rights.
Despite the committee’s failure to prevail in a very conservative district court, it now hopes its arguments might resonate with a panel of 5th Circuit judges who will be tasked with reviewing the appeal.
Brasso said the RNC is “confident the 5th Circuit will properly apply federal law” and ultimately strike down Mississippi’s post-election receipt deadline. But the appeal may be more of a longshot than the committee thinks.
Indeed, courts have repeatedly rejected arguments against ballot receipt deadlines in similar Republican-backed cases. In July, a federal judge tossed out a lawsuit from the RNC and the Trump Campaign that challenged Nevada’s four-day post-election deadline for accepting mail-in ballots.
And within the past year alone, even Trump-appointed judges in Illinois and North Dakota have rebuffed right-wing lawsuits over post-election ballot receipt deadlines that leveraged largely similar arguments to those made by the RNC in the Mississippi and Nevada cases.
With Election Day just a few months away, it is uncertain as to whether the 5th Circuit will resolve the RNC’s appeal in the Mississippi case prior to the 2024 general election.