“Supreme Court Attempts To Slow Flood Of Last-Minute Election Litigation”

Chris Geidner for BuzzFeed:

The Supreme Court attempted to slow an ever-expanding map of pre-election litigation on Saturday — sending a message to lower courts that the time had passed for rulings that would change the way election laws are implemented for Tuesday’s election….

For election law lawyers, it is a message that the so-called “Purcell principle” — referring to an earlier Supreme Court election law case — remains in effect. The Purcell principle is, as law professor Rick Hasen explains it, “the idea that courts should not issue orders which change election rules in the period just before the election.” Such late changes in the way elections are carried out are disfavored because they risk causing confusion to voters, candidates, election law administrators, and courts.

The spirit motivating the Purcell principle became abundantly clear on Saturday after the Supreme Court issued its order, when people immediately began asking what would happen to ballots that were collected in between the 9th Circuit’s Friday order and the Supreme Court’s Saturday order, or what would happen to ballots collected after the 9th Circuit’s order but not yet submitted by the time of the Supreme Court’s order. The Arizona Secretary of State quickly attempted to stop any confusion on that point, announcing that ballots collected during the period when the law was enjoined could be submitted on Monday and will be counted.

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