I don't get the ruling! Each State was assured State Legislators would determine who leads the States, not AGs & Judges manipulating their Legislator's rules. These States wouldn't have even entered the Union without these election protections! So the Union of States decided State Legislators would pick their collective leader, understand what I mean? Texas is saying the leader of the collective States was not to be determined by undermining this agreement! Right?!
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Question: How is Foster v. Love controlling with regard to Presidential Elections that are completed after Election Day?
The opinion says the following about presidential elections:
[The] congressional rule adopted under the Elections Clause (and its counterpart for the Executive Branch, Art. II, § 1, cl. 3) sets the date of the biennial election for federal offices, as “[t]he Tuesday next after the 1st Monday in November… This provision, along with 2 U. S. C. § 1
(setting the same rule for electing Senators under the Seventeenth Amendment) and 3 U. S. C. § 1 (doing the same for selecting Presidential electors), mandates holding all elections for Congress and the Presidency on a single day throughout the Union.”
If an election is consummated after Election Day, this also violates the statute, and such behavior, along with State legislation that encourages it, is preempted by 3 U.S.C. § 1.
Congressional Globe, 28th Cong., 2d Sess., at 14, December 9, 1844 (Mr. Duncan)), where both the “intention”, and the “object, of the bill were stated:
“The first section of his bill simply declared what its intention was—that, from and after the passage of this act, all regular stated elections for the choice of electors of President and Vice President of the United States shall be held on the same day, and on one single day, in all the States of the Union.”
“The object of the bill was to prevent frauds at the ballot box as in 1840; but such frauds could not occur in South Carolina, for she elected her electors by her legislature; consequently there was no chance for pipelaying.”
DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE, et al. v. WISCONSIN STATE LEGISLATURE, et al. October 26, 2020 The Constitution provides that state legislatures—not federal judges, not state judges, not state governors, not other state officials—bear primary responsibility for setting election rules. Art. I, §4, cl. 1.
To state the obvious, a State cannot conduct an election without deadlines. It follows that the right to vote is not substantially burdened by a requirement that voters “act in a timely fashion if they wish to express their views in the voting booth.” Burdick, 504 U. S., at 438. For the same reason, the right to vote is not substantially burdened by a requirement that voters act in a timely fashion if they wish to cast an absentee ballot. Either way, voters need to vote on time. A deadline is not unconstitutional merely because of voters’ “own failure to take timely steps” to ensure their franchise. Rosario v. Rockefeller, 410 U. S. 752, 758 (1973).
For important reasons, most States, including Wisconsin, require absentee ballots to be received by election day, not just mailed by election day. Those States want to avoid the chaos and suspicions of impropriety that can ensue if thousands of absentee ballots flow in after election day and potentially flip the results of an election. And those States also want to be able to definitively announce the results of the election on election night, or as soon as possible thereafter.