-The Court has had to respond
to sort of a dizzying round of emergency applications
from all over the country this week
regarding the deadline extensions
for when ballots would be received by states.
They turned down an extension in Wisconsin,
said that it couldn't go into effect,
but at the same time, extensions in North Carolina
and Pennsylvania can go into effect.
And so it looks like it doesn't make much sense,
but there is one sort of underlying factor
in all of them.
The court has been approving those that have been agreed
to by state courts or state officials,
and they have not been approving the ones
that have been imposed by federal judges.
In Wisconsin, it was brought by some civil rights groups
and by Democrats who said there needed to be more time
given for these ballots to be received and then counted.
Wisconsin had a law that said they had to be received
by election day.
A federal judge held a hearing.
He extended the deadline.
That went to an appeals court.
The appeals court said no, that the legislature decided
that there were other ways to deal
with this through early voting or other accommodations,
and the appeals court would not go along with it.
That took the issue to the Supreme Court.
And the Supreme Court agreed with the appeals court,
saying no, federal judges shouldn't be doing this,
especially when the legislature
has already said something about this.
In North Carolina, it was a little different.
The state already had a sort of grace period
of a few days for ballots to be accepted.
But Democrats and civil rights groups said that because
of the pandemic, there needed to be more days.
And so the state elections board agreed to that.
And so, in that case, the Supreme Court went along
with lower courts who had approved this
and said because it was the state elections board
and it was not just federal judges coming in
to make these decisions, that new deadline should stand.
Democrats and civil rights groups, again,
went to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court
and said that there should be an extension
and some other accommodations made to make voting easier.
And in that case,
the Pennsylvania Supreme Court agreed.
They again extended this period
for when the ballots could come in and still be counted
until three days after the election.
That went up the chain, as well, as arrived at the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court voted on a 4-4 tie
about whether to stay that decision.
And because it was a tie,
that meant that there weren't enough votes
to grant what Republicans had asked for.
Once it became clear that President Trump's Supreme Court
nominee, Amy Coney Barrett,
was going to be confirmed quickly,
Pennsylvania came back to the Supreme Court
and asked again for them to take the case
and to stay the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's decision.
The Courts again said no, but it brought a very angry
dissent from Justice Samuel Alito,
joined by Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch.
And in that case, Alito agreed that it was too close
to the election for them to take the case.
But he said he thought the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's
decision was probably unconstitutional,
that the legislature is the one
that should be making these decisions.
And he held out the possibility that this could all come back
to the Supreme Court after the election.
In fact, Pennsylvania has agreed that it will separate out
all of the mail-in ballots that it receives
by 8:00 on November 3rd, which was the original deadline,
and those that are received after that until 5:00 p.
m.
November 6th, which is the new deadline.
And so those votes could be subject to challenge
at some point after the election
depending on how close the vote is in that state.
One thing that was interesting in the Pennsylvania decision
was that Justice Amy Coney Barrett decided to sit it out.
She had just arrive at the court the day before.
She said through the court that she was not participating
because she just got there, it had to be decided quickly,
and she had not had enough time to weigh in on it.
Now, that's interesting because usually,
justices don't explain why they recuse themselves.
And Barrett seemed to be saying, "I'm not making a pledge
that I'm not gonna get involved
in any of these 2020 election cases,
only that I'm not getting involved in this one
in Pennsylvania and this one in North Carolina."
And it could be that there are enough justices
who want to look at this issue
that they take the case after the election.
And Justice Alito even warned
that maybe these votes wouldn't be counted.
-Just moments ago, I spoke with George W.
Bush and congratulated him
on becoming the 43rd president of the United States.
-We all remember 2000, right, Bush v.
Gore, in which the court played such a pivotal role
in deciding that the presidency was gonna go to George W.
Bush.
-The real issue is what does Article 2 of The Constitution
mean in the first instance?
And it delegates authority directly
to the state legislatures.
-And so the worry is that voters through no real fault
of their own will apply for a mail-in ballot,
get it, fill it out, vote by election day,
but that it still won't be received in time to be counted.
And so that's what the court has been fighting over
in all of these sort of late-night emergency orders
that have come out.