By BEN SZALINSKI
Capitol News Illinois
[email protected]
SPRINGFIELD – The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear an appeal on a lawsuit led by Illinois Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Bost challenging Illinois’ mail-in voting law.
Bost and a pair of Illinois primary delegates for President Donald Trump sued the Illinois State Board of Elections in 2022, arguing that the state’s law allowing mail-in ballots to be counted after Election Day violates the federal law establishing an “Election Day.” Both a lower federal trial court and federal appeals court have ruled Bost lacked standing to sue.
The Supreme Court said its ruling will focus on whether Bost, of Murphysboro, in his role as a political candidate has legal grounds to sue over a state’s election law, rather than if Illinois’ mail-in voting law is legal, because the appeal challenges lower court rulings that Bost did not legal grounds to sue.
A favorable ruling for Bost by the Supreme Court could force lower courts to issue a ruling about Illinois’ law.
“With the American people’s confidence in our elections at a discouraging low point, it’s more important than ever we work to restore their trust,” Bost said in a statement. “I believe a big part of that effort is ensuring all votes are tallied by Election Day, not days or weeks later. I am thankful the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear my appeal of Illinois’ election law.”
It’s not clear when the nation’s high court will hear Bost’s case. The court is scheduled to begin hearing oral arguments in October.
Under Illinois law, ballots postmarked by Election Day can be counted as late as 14 days after the election as they arrive at local election offices. Bost’s case argues this violates the federal law establishing Election Day by allowing votes to arrive and be counted for two weeks after the polls close.
After the unfavorable lower court rulings, Judicial Watch kept the fight going to the U.S. Supreme Court after appealing in November. The conservative legal group cited conflicting rulings on mail-in voting in other states and said Bost’s case is “an ideal vehicle” for the nation’s high court to decide whether ballots can be counted after Election Day.
The filing cited numerous cases from 2020 challenging election laws and outcomes, some of which Judicial Watch was a part of, in efforts to block the counting of mail-in ballots.
“It is an injustice that the courts would deny a federal candidate the ability to challenge an election provision that could lead to illegal votes being cast and counted for two weeks after Election Day,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement.
Judicial Watch argues costs for campaigns to monitor ballot counting beyond Election Day constitute harm to candidates for public office that must be addressed by the court. But the Illinois State Board of Elections via the attorney general’s office argued Judicial Watch fails to show Bost negatively suffered because of Illinois’ law, and Bost’s case would not be the right case for the court to use to review mail-in voting laws.
“Petitioners have never advanced any allegations that Illinois’s ballot receipt deadline might materially impact their likelihood of prevailing in any election,” the board argued.
In a response filing to the board’s request for the court to dismiss the case, Judicial Watch argued the Board of Elections has warned ahead of elections that apparent leads in vote totals can change as late-arriving ballots are counted, meaning election results can change negatively for Bost.
But the State Board of Elections argued Illinois’ mail-in voting law doesn’t directly regulate candidates.
“Illinois’s ballot receipt deadline does not regulate petitioners directly as political candidates; it simply recognizes the reality that ballots cast by mail may be delayed,” the board argued.
Winning elections has not been a problem for Bost. He has represented the 12th Congressional District in southern Illinois since 2015 and was reelected in 2024 with nearly 75% of the vote. His district did change slightly in redistricting after the 2020 census.
Judicial Watch said it worried “illegal votes could diminish his margin of victory” and make it appear that he is growing more unpopular with his constituents. The organization also argued Bost filed this case to preemptively correct perceived issues with the vote by mail law.
Republicans in Illinois and at the national level embraced mail-in voting in the 2024 election cycle after pushing back against it in recent years. The Illinois Republican Party joined the Republican National Committee’s “bank your vote” initiative, which encouraged reliable Republican voters to vote early or by mail so campaign resources could be focused on turning out people who were on the fence about voting or who were undecided.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
