Over the weekend, I posted Understanding the Pennsylvania GOP Hail Mary Fighting the Extended Deadline for Receipt of Mailed Ballots, and the Awful Pressure that the GOP’s Petition Could Put on Soon-to-Be Justice Barrett. which begins:
The Pennsylvania GOP has gone back to the U.S. Supreme Court and the state supreme court in an effort to renew its objection to the counting of mail-in ballots that arrive after 8 pm on Election night (as set forth in the state statute) to include all ballots arriving within three days of election day postmarked by election day or without a legible postmark. This comes just a few days after the Supreme Court deadlocked on the question thereby leaving the deadline in place. The GOP’s play is unlikely to work, first, because the chances are still small that the election would come down not only to Pennsylvania but to these later arriving ballots; and second, because of the reliance interests created by the Supreme Court’s earlier failure to reverse the extension. If it does come down to all that, the request to expedite the cert. petition would put Judge Amy Coney Barrett, soon to be the ninth Justice, in an awful position, perhaps increasing the chances she will recuse in the litigation.
An ELB reader writes in to note that it appears so far that only the PA Republican Party has filed a cert petition and request to expedite, and not the state legislature or Republican state legislative leaders (who had filed a request for a stay earlier that was denied on a 4-4 vote). Hard to see how the Republican Party has standing to raise the question related to the Legislature’s Article II powers. (They’d have a better shot at standing on their election day timing argument, but that one is very weak on the merits.)