We are relentless for cleaner, fairer, more honest, more reliable elections. Big news this week. We just heard from the Supreme Court that they will take up a judicial watch case related to the counting of ballots that arrived after election day. We had a major lawsuit in Illinois over the counting of ballots that arrived after election day. We were representing, and are representing, Congressman Mike Bost, B-O-S-T from Illinois, two presidential electors. And in Illinois, they count ballots that arrived for up to 14 days after election day. And rather than address the merits, the lower courts found that Congressman Bost and our clients did not have standing, meaning the ability to go to court and essentially challenge this lawlessness by Illinois, which is contravening federal law that requires the counting of ballots that arrived before election day, not after election day, because federal law sets an election day, not an election week or month.

And we asked the Supreme Court to take up this issue. Do try to stop unlawful counting of ballots contrary to federal law? Well, the Supreme Court said, well, we’re going to consider the issue. And so it was a big announcement this week. I talked about that issue in a video announcing the big news earlier this week. Everyone, the Supreme Court just announced today would take up an election law-related challenge filed by judicial watch in Illinois on behalf of a congressman and electors in Illinois concerned about the counting of ballots that arrive after election day, which they do for two weeks after election day in Illinois.

That means ballots arrive up to two weeks past election day and they still get counted, which is contrary to federal law, which states an election day, not an election week. Now, the congressman, the federal candidate, obviously has standing that challenges the law, but the two lower courts decided, no, he doesn’t have standing. They were divided, but the Supreme Court wants to settle this issue and they decided to take up this massive judicial watch case. It’s historically important that the rule of law be vindicated on election integrity. So this is a big step and the court will hear our case next term.

So the hearing of the case could occur as soon as October of this year. They haven’t set a hearing date yet, but we expect it will be before the end of the year because the term ends the end of this month. I think it ends July 1st, more or less, and then they start up hearing cases again absent extraordinary circumstances in October, the first Monday in October, right? So major victory for judicial watch in terms of bringing a case before the highest court in the land on a core issue related to election integrity.

And it’s currently, we don’t know what the court’s going to consider if they’re going to get to the merits of the court, the justices want to talk about the underlying issue, but in the least the issue of standing is a key one. And we did an explainer video a little bit, which kind of summarizes this issue pretty succinctly for you. And I encourage you, and we’ll provide a link to it separately, but I’ll play it for you here. So, you know, to go find it later and share it with your friends and colleagues.

Judicial watch is taking its election integrity fight to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court just agreed to hear judicial watch’s appeal for a case filed on behalf of Congressman Mike Bost in two presidential electors, challenging an Illinois law extending election day for 14 days beyond the date established by federal law. The lower courts had previously denied that Congressman Bost and the electors had standing to challenge Illinois’s practice of counting ballots received for up to two weeks after election day. In the lawsuit, judicial watch argues despite Congress’s clear statement regarding a single national election day, Illinois has expanded election day by extending by 14 days the date for receipt and counting of vote by mail ballots.

Judicial watch President Tom Fidden had this to say about the upcoming Supreme Court action. The Supreme Court’s decision to hear this case is a critical opportunity to uphold federal law, protect voter rights, and ensure election integrity. Illinois’s 14 day extension of election day for its federal law violates the civil rights of voters and invites fraud. Last year, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with judicial watch that it was unlawful for Mississippi to count ballots that arrived after election day. Visit judicialwatch.org to learn more. Yeah, so this is not the only case we have over the counting of ballots after election day or ballots that are received after election day.

As President Trump noted in his executive order, supporting essentially our theory of the law that federal law sets an election day, which means in the least the ballots have to be received in order to be counted as valid. He said it’s like someone showing up three days after the polls close in person and demanding to have their vote counted. It’s too late. And in Mississippi, they were counting ballots that arrived for up to five days after election day. And as we noted in that video, the Fifth Circuit found that that’s unlawful.

Federal law is what it says on election day. You know, it’s nonsense, in my view, to say there is no provision requiring ballots get there by election day because what flows from that? What flows from that is there’s no deadline at all, which can’t be. So if there’s no deadline under federal law, that means states could have a deadline that extend years after election day, potentially. And that’s why, in my view, the Fifth Circuit threw out, essentially, the Mississippi law overturned it, essentially, found it to be conflict with federal law. Now, Mississippi just certified their appeal of that ruling to the Supreme Court today.

They filed a cert petition. So the Supreme Court may have more than one Judicial Watch case before too long, depending on how that turns out. Now, separately, we have this lawsuit in California that’s like the Illinois case. It’s like the Mississippi case. In California, they count ballots that arrived for up to seven days after election day. And notoriously, in California, there were seats in Congress that switched from Republican to Democrat, two seats at least, as a result of ballots that arrived after election day. And for whatever reason, Congress or the House doesn’t want to deal with that, because the House is the judge of its own elections, and they can find an election wanting and make a change.

At least they should be investigating the issue, don’t you think? If Democrats were running the House, do you think they would, if there was an arguable case that the law was violated and changing seats from Democrat to Republican, do you think they would just sit idly by? I don’t think they would, nor do I think they ought to, necessarily. And I think the House should try to vindicate the rule of law and at least investigate this issue. But in the meantime, we have a lawsuit to try to stop the unlawful counting of ballots that arrive after election day.

We filed it on behalf of Darryl Issa, the Republican congressman from California. And now, the state doesn’t believe that Issa has standing, right? Just like Illinois said. So that case may be put on hold for a bit until the Supreme Court gets to the issue as to whether candidates have standing. And here’s the brief. This is the cert brief we filed. That’s what the lawyers call it. Rit Asershiari, to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, and then the Supreme Court of the United States, Petition for Rit Asershiari.

The question presented, as we say in the material here, the question presented, you think, several pages later. Excuse me. Well, you would think the question presented would be easily found, but now I can’t see it. Well, the question presented is whether candidates have the standing to challenge the counting of ballots that arrive after election day. Not every state allows this to happen. Only 18, 19 states, I think, in the District of Columbia allow it to happen. And it’s got to stop. It’s got to stop. It undermines election integrity. It invites fraud, besides being contrary to federal law.

And as we say in the lawsuit, excuse me, say in the petition that I just read to you or showed you, it’s pretty clear that candidates can’t try to vindicate the rule of law on elections. Who can? For over 130 years, this Court, the Supreme Court, has heard claims brought by federal candidates challenging state, time, place, or manner regulations affecting their federal elections. Until recently, it was axiomatic that candidates had standing to challenge these regulations. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine anyone who has a more particularized injury than the candidate has.

That is because a candidate who, quote, pours money and sweat into a campaign who spends time away from her job and family to traverse the campaign trail and puts her name on a ballot, has an undeniably different and more particularized interest in the multi-term congressman, Congressman Bost, and two federal electors. They challenged an Illinois law that allows absentee ballots to be received and counted after the day specified in federal statutes for holding federal elections. They contend the Illinois receipt deadline is preempted by the federal election day statutes. The petition presents an opportunity for this Court to provide lower courts and litigants much-needed guidance on candidates standing outside of the high-stakes emergency post-election litigation where these issues commonly arise.

So we shouldn’t have to wait for an election day-related crisis to get some justice here. There’s plenty of time to do it, arguably before the 2026 elections to help settle the law in this regard. And the Supreme Court took up our offer. So it’s an incredibly positive development. Now the left has been opposing our efforts to stop the counting of ballots that arrive after election day. In California, the judge there left us into our case as literally defendants to try to oppose us. So we’re not just taking on the states in these various cases, but we’re taking on these left-wing advocacy groups, well-funded, well-organized, who come in to try to thwart our efforts to clean up election integrity.

And you can be sure as our battle escalates to the Supreme Court, these leftist groups will not only jointly rise against us further in the Supreme Court by filing briefs and such, but they’ll come after us directly because we’re terrible people for wanting to make sure that elections are being run according to the law. Do I have to explain to you why it’s important that election day means something? That if there are no rules, it means that there is an open invitation of fraud and loss of confidence in the outcome of any election result? As I said, it would be 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.

So it’s critical the Supreme Court take up this case because it’s not only the rights of candidates here and presidential electors, but they’re acting in the place in most respects in the place of the citizens who support them, the voters who support them. And the American people have a right to have their elections run according to the law, not according to whatever the left can get away with. Federal law defines election day, in case that you don’t know what the federal law says, it’s interesting, as the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November of every even-numbered year.

Despite Congress’ clear statement regarding a single national election day, Illinois, Mississippi, California, here in Washington, D.C., for example, they’ve expanded election day for days and weeks past the deadline set by federal law. And as I said, in California, it’s led to different election outcomes than otherwise arguably would have happened if the law had been followed in California. This is why the House should take a look at it, because they’ve got two members who got in there as a result of what can be plausibly argued was the counting of votes that were invalid.

So this is a major issue for the Supreme Court coming up. It’s the most important election-law-related issue because it’s the question of who could challenge and dispute the way an election is run. The left wants to restrict that in such a way so that only their buddies and allies can, and that anyone who has serious concerns the way judicial watch or clients do about the law being specifically adhered to, strictly adhered to, they shouldn’t have the right to challenge it. And so it’s not just about the challenging of vote counting that occurs of the challenging of the counting of votes received after election day.

It’s other election battles. Who has the right to vindicate the rule of law in that regard? Who can go to court to stop an election from being stolen? The state of Illinois, the state of California, the left say, not a candidate. Not a candidate. And that to me is absurd on its face. And clearly the Supreme Court has enough of a concern about what’s going on that they want to consider the issue fully and decide for itself. So great victory for the rule of law. And this of course comes on top of all of judicial watch’s other legal work related to election integrity.

I got to give credit to our legal team, Bob Popper, Russ Nobiel, Eric Lee, who have been litigating these cases. We’ve cleaned up five million names from the rolls through our other litigation, legal action against states across the nation. Five million dirty names cleaned from the rolls because there’s another federal law that requires states to take reasonable steps to clean up the rolls. And it’s pretty easy to figure out when they’re not taking reasonable steps to clean up the rolls because people don’t vote for years and their names are kept on the rolls nevertheless.

So they could die potentially, move away, and obviously dirty voting lists can mean dirty elections. That’s why the law requires they be cleaned up. And it was judicial watch who really broke the mold and filed the first private lawsuits to force states to try to clean up the rolls as the law requires. And as a result of those lawsuits and as a result of even sending warning letters to some of these states and localities, we’ve had five million names clean up the rolls, cleaned from the rolls in just the last few years.

But we still have cases pending. We’re out in California. We’re out in Oregon. Illinois has a filthy list as well. We have another lawsuit there. There are tens of millions of names, arguably, that should be removed from the rolls nationwide. So five million is a pretty good start and pretty outrageous when you think about it that it was judicial watch who had to step into court, a private group, to do this basic heavy lifting on election integrity. And it wasn’t just Democrats. It wasn’t just liberals. It was states run by conservatives and Republicans who also weren’t doing what they were supposed to do to ensure the rolls were being cleaned.

Maybe we were in North Carolina. We were in Pennsylvania. We were in Kentucky, California. California cleaned up 1.2 million names alone in LA County. New York City cleaned up nearly a million names. DC, like 20% of their lists they cleaned up, I think. One county in Pennsylvania, we sent a warning letter to that I think within like minutes, not literally minutes, but practically minutes, metaphorically minutes, they said, hey, thanks for your letter. We just cleaned up 69,000 names from the rolls. So we are relentless for cleaner, fairer, more honest, more reliable elections. And so what it means cleaning up the rolls or ensuring only ballots that are valid are counted, it’s essential work that your judicial watch has been able to do thanks to support of all of you out there.

If you’re supporting judicial watch, you should know that the reason our elections are cleaner, I would argue the reasons we had, I think, at least at the presidential level a more honest election, we stopped the steal in 2024. In large measure, I would submit thanks to judicial watch’s efforts for cleaner and fairer elections. And now we are going to be before the Supreme Court on a core issue of who has the right to go into court and try to vindicate their rights under the law to ensure that elections are being followed according to law.

You know, it’s one thing to stop the steal through, you know, making sure the rolls are clean, but to be told you can’t even go to court to try to ensure election integrity as the law already requires, that would be bad if that happened, right? So this is a big, big case. So just great news. [tr:trw].

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