Election, campaign rules under scrutiny
Supreme Court decisions could affect midterms
By: Maureen Groppe
USA Today
WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court might not be done disrupting this year's [2026] elections.
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As the fallout from tis recent decision weakening the Voting Rights Act continues, the court had two more election-related cases expected to be decided by early July. [2026]
..... At issue are when mailed ballots must be received to be counted and whether one of the last remaining checks on money in politics should be eliminated.
..... It's not the number of election-related cases the court is deciding that stands out to Rick Hasen, an election expert and law professor at UCLA.
..... "There have been terms where there have been lots of cases on elections," he said. "What's unusual about this is that they're having an immediate effect."
..... The changes to the Voting Rights Act prompted several Southern states to redraw congressional maps even though voting had already begun.
..... Alabama postponed party primaries for four of its seven House districts as it tries to eliminate a district with a significant Black population, a battle that is back at the Supreme Court.
..... And depending on how the justices rule in other pending cases, there could be immediate shifts in campaign spending and in which ballots can be counted.
'Seismic effects' from ruling
..... The court's April 29 [2026] decision throwing out Louisiana's congressional map for relying too heavily on race to sort voters made it significantly harder for Black people and other racial minorities to argue that a map unfairly dilutes their voter power.
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That ruling "will have absolutely seismic effects on the 2026 and 2028 elections," said David Froomkin, an assistant professor of law at the University of Houston Law Center whose expertise includes election law.
..... "States across the south are already moving to eliminate minority opportunity districts that used to be guaranteed by the Voting Rights Act," Froomkin said in an email. "the long-term effect is hard to product with confidence, because voters and parties can change their behavior, but the short-term effect is clearly to hand several House seas to the Republican Party."
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The ruling had a big impact not just because of how the case was decided but because of when it came down.
..... If the decision had been issued earlier in the term, states like Louisiana and Alabama wouldn't have had to postpone elections to take advantage of it. And a July [2026] decision would likely have come to late for most states to change maps before the November [2026] election.
..... Alabama field an emergency appeal on May 27 [2026] asking the Supreme Court to let it use a Pro-Repulbican congressional map that a lower court said intentionally discriminates ageist black voters.
Grace periods for mailed ballots
..... In a case argued in March, [2026] the Supreme Court is determining whether to strike down a Mississippi law allowing ballots by Election Day to be counted if they're received within five days.
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More than a dozen states have similar laws. Additional states allow late-arriving ballots from military and overseas voters.
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Eliminating grace periods may not influence election results because relatively few ballots arrive late regardless of whether a state has a grace period, according to Daniel Thompson, a political scientist at the University of California. Los Angeles, and an expert on how elections rules affect outcomes.
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But if the court backs the Republican Party's challenge to Mississippi's law, that could be a public relations win for President Donald Trump, who has long riled against mail-in voting as being vulnerable to fraud, claiming without evidence it cost him the 2020 election.
..... Froomkin said the case "has to be understood as part of a broader pattern of the Republican Party tying to undermine public confidence in election integrity."
..... The decision could also be problematic for states with grace periods, according to Richard Briffault, an election law expert at Columbia Law School.
..... Because the Supreme court can dictate changes only for federal elections, sate could end up with different rules for state and local votes. Changing rules to avoid confusion could require calling state legislatures into session, he said.
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"I can't imagine the sates won't do it," Briffault said, "But if they don't, it would be a gigantic mess."
..... And Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola Marymount University, said a decision ending grace periods could drop a "chaos bomb" on the counting of military and overseas ballots.
..... If the court does rule out grace periods for feudal races, election administrators are going to need huge educational campaigns to inform votes of the importance of retuning ballots on time, Hasen said.
..... Because it usually takes voters a few election cycles to figure out such changes, he added, some will probably not get the message this year [2026] and will lose their vote.
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While that's unlikely to have an overall impact on election outcomes, Briffault said, "in any one election, it might."
Challenge to campaign finances
..... A case argued in December [2025] gives the Supreme Court a chance to continue chipping away at campaign spending and contribution limits.
..... Republicans - including Vice President JD Vance - are challenging a more than 50-year-old rule capping how much parties can spend in coordination with candidates.
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A decision lifting cap could benefit the GOP, at least in the short run, because Democratic candidates have not relied on as much financial help from political parties, they've been better at attracting small-dollar donations.
..... But Brffault doubts the decision will be a game changer because parties already have other ways of spending huge amounts of money to help candidates.
..... Hasen said the bigger disruption could come if the court sides with the GOP in a way that changes the standard for revenging the constitutionally of campaign contribution limits.