Supreme Court mail ballot ruling spurs Trump and MAGA meltdown: ‘This is how our country dies’

Republican officials including President Donald Trump and anti-voting activists are melting down after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld state laws Monday that allow grace periods for ballots mailed by Election Day. 

The right responded to the ruling by stoking more fears about voter fraud and lamenting that the court had allowed “endless mail-in ballots.” Trump and far-right figures also used the decision to bolster an ongoing push for the SAVE America Act — though the measure does not address the issue at stake in the case.

“In light of the tremendous loss in the Supreme Court today concerning Voter’s Rights, and the fact that ‘people’s’ votes are allowed to be counted LONG AFTER an Election is over, it is more important than ever to pass THE SAVE AMERICA ACT,” Trump wrote an hour after the ruling came down.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) called the decision a “loss for election integrity” and said his state will continue to only count mail ballots that arrive by Election Day. 

“SCOTUS validates election practices in places like California that count votes received after the election,” DeSantis said.

In a 5-4 decision in Watson v. Republican National Committee, the nation’s highest court upheld Mississippi’s 2020 law that guarantees all mail ballots postmarked by Election Day are counted, so long as they arrive up to five days later. Currently, 14 states have laws allowing mail ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted if they arrive after.

“The Supreme Court just handed the Left a weapon they will use in every close race between now and November,” Cleta Mitchell, a conservative lawyer and activist who founded the anti-voting organization Election Integrity Network, wrote in an email to supporters. “Mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day can now arrive days later and still be counted. In 14 states. With no way to verify where they’ve been or what happened to them.” 

Mitchell, who played a pivotal role in President Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 vote in Georgia, also noted the role mail ballots played in the recent California elections, where GOP candidates’ election night leads withered as mail ballots arrived days later. 

“Similar issues have created prolonged uncertainty and changed results in other states,” she said. “That is wrong as a matter of principle — and it erodes trust in our elections.”

“Remember Election Day?” Rep. Abe Hamadeh (R-Ariz.) asked on X. “This disastrous SCOTUS decision, authored by Justice Barrett, guarantees we’ll keep drifting away from it — as our sacred elections get bogged down by endless mail-in ballots and never-ending counts.” 

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, writing for the majority, rejected the GOP’s argument that federal laws setting a date for elections preempted states from accepting ballots after that day.

“[E]lection-day statutes do not set a deadline for ballot receipt, so they do not prevent Mississippi from counting ballots postmarked after election day yet received afterward,” Barrett wrote.

Far-right lawmakers and figures slammed Barrett for authoring the majority’s opinion and, along with Chief Justice John Roberts, siding with the three liberal justices in upholding Mississippi’s law. 

“Amy Coney Barrett is the worst choice ever among all GOP justices. And that includes Roberts,” anti-voting activist Seth Keshel wrote. “What a disappointment she is.”

Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) called the Supreme Court ruling a “shockingly wrong opinion.”

“Justice Barrett joins with the liberal justices to hold that federal election law does not preempt states who allow late mail-in ballots to be counted,” Schmitt said. “This is terrible for election integrity.” 

Schmitt added that the Watson ruling was another reason for Congress to pass the SAVE America Act — the sweeping anti-voting bill that’s currently stalled in the Senate.

Trump took to social media to pressure the five GOP senators who don’t support the measure to flip their votes. The senators — Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, Thom Tillis, Bill Cassidy, and Mitch McConnell — “must vote to SAVE OUR COUNTRY,” Trump said.

Other right-wing figures joined the call to pressure the Senate to pass the bill in the wake of the Watson ruling. 

“Yet ANOTHER reason the SAVE America Act must be passed NOW!” right-wing commentator Nick Sortor wrote. “This means states like California can CONTINUE taking WEEKS to count ballots after Election Day. BEYOND insane.”

The anti-voting activist Scott Presler was even more anguished.

“So, basically, we just learned that if a state passes a law to accept mail-in ballots weeks after Election Day, SCOTUS will uphold the law,” Presler wrote. “This is how our country dies.”

Far-right podcaster Tim Pool shared Presler’s distress.

“If there is no election day we have no democracy,” Pool wrote.

David J. Freeman, a far-right minister and political activist who posts online under the moniker “Gunther Eagleman,” called the ruling a “big loss for Republicans.”

Freeman praised Justice Samuel Alito’s dissent, which warned that the ruling “creates a serious risk of further undermining public confidence in our elections and our system of self-government.”

“Translation: Places like California can keep taking their sweet time ‘finding’ ballots days (or weeks) later and it’s all good,” Freeman wrote. “We need REAL election integrity, same-day voting, strict deadlines, voter ID, and no more games where the count drags on until the “right” number appears. PASS THE SAVE AMERICA ACT!”