MASSIVE Supreme Court Case Could Throw Out YOUR Vote

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Even as Republicans are trying to pass the biggest voter suppression bill in history, the

Republican war on voting in court has not stopped.

In fact, next week, the US Supreme Court will hear a critical voting case out of the state

of Mississippi, where the Republican National Committee is trying to throw out mail-in ballots.

No surprise there.

In this episode, I'll break down what's at stake in Watson V.R.N.C.

What it means for the mid-term elections and beyond, and whether the Republican National

Committee is actually now admitting that Al Gore actually won the 2000 elections.

Look, it's going to be a journey, so grab yourself a drink, strap in, and enjoy the

ride.

But before we get into it, make sure to subscribe to this channel to stay informed about

how you can defend democracy.

So over the last few days and weeks, all of the talk in the pro-democracy world has been

about the Save Act.

This is the massive voter suppression law that was passed by the House earlier this year.

Then Donald Trump got really nervous that he's going to lose the mid-term elections.

So he made a new version called the Save America Act, and that is now pending before the

Senate.

If you want to catch up on that, we've written about it extensively at Democracy Docket,

and also in a prior video.

So you can check out both the website and also that video by looking in the links in the

description below.

But what I want to focus on today is the war that continues to rage in the courts.

And in particular, on one case, that the United States Supreme Court is going to hear

oral argument in next week.

It's called Watson versus RNC.

And it began as a lawsuit by the Republican National Committee against the state of Mississippi.

Now, if you're wondering why on earth is the RNC spending millions of dollars to litigate

a case involving mail-in voting in Mississippi, the reason is clear.

They don't care about Mississippi, right after all, Mississippi is a safe Republican state,

and it also doesn't allow no excuse absentee voting.

That's right, in order to vote in Mississippi, you either need to be out of town or sick.

You need to have a reason why you can't vote in person.

So the Republican National Committee chose Mississippi to bring this lawsuit for a specific

reason.

In trying to cripple mail-in voting through every means possible, right, we know this.

They have been trying to just do away with it entirely.

That's part of what Donald Trump wants to do through the SAV Act.

They're trying to cripple it by requiring photo ID to vote by mail.

I mean, what the hell does that even mean?

That's another provision in the earlier version of the SAV Act.

Before Donald Trump just came out and said, look, let's just get rid of it entirely.

They've been warring against drop boxes.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, the secure meddled containers.

They've been trying to ban those all over the country, right?

So we're used to this overall attack by Republicans against mail-in voting because Donald Trump

has a war on mail-in voting and the Republican Party does whatever Donald Trump tells them

to do.

And one of the particular pieces in this war on voting, something that I wrote about all

the way back at the beginning of democracy, back in 2020 in March, I wrote an article entitled

The Four Pillars to Protect Voting Rights with Vote By Mail.

And one of those four pillars to protect voting rights is making sure that voters who

put their mail-in ballot in the Postal Service system before Election Day have that ballot

counted.

Put it another way, no voters should be disenfranchised because they mailed their ballot back and the

Postal Service took a while for it to be delivered.

So if you, you know, fill out your mail-in ballot and you put it in the mail on the Thursday

before Election Day.

Even if it takes until Wednesday or Thursday after Election Day, that ballot should be counted.

Okay.

That's one of the core principles that I articulated way back at the beginning of democracy

not could in 2020 as how we are going to make sure that there is not mass disenfranchisement

of voting with more people voting by mail.

Republicans, of course, picked up and picked this up and came to the opposite conclusion.

They were like, wait, Mark thinks this is a way not to disenfranchise people.

So we want to do the things that Mark says shouldn't be done.

And if you go back and read that article, you'll see that it lays out, you know, six years

ago, what is now many of the key battles about voting by mail.

Again, if you haven't become a democracy-docket subscriber yet, a great time to do it is right

now, you could click on the links in front of you or in the description below.

About half the states, depending on how you count, follow the rule that I said made common

sense back in 2020, right?

If you mail your mail-in ballot on time and the postal service takes a long time, that

shouldn't disenfranchise you.

You shouldn't pay that price.

And that's particularly the case since the joy became the Postmaster General under Donald

Trump's first time.

And we have seen these systematic cutting back in mail services that will delay these

ballots.

And again, democracy-docket has covered this problem extensively.

So now the postal service doesn't even postmark your mail at the local post office, takes

a day or two before the post market's added, that makes things even worse.

Then like in many parts of the country, your ballot goes through this regional center that

may not even be in your state.

So you can live on Elm Street and two streets over on Maple Street is where your ballot

is going to the local election office.

And what you find out is it's actually going to a regional sorting facility outside the

state that's adding days upon days upon days.

OK, again, that's a big problem and one that democracy-docket has covered.

But the Republicans don't see it as a problem.

They see it as an opportunity.

They're like this, great, mail-in ballots moving slowly.

We can disenfranchise more people.

And the way we're going to do it is we are going to say that your ballot has to be in

by election day.

Your mail-in ballot has to have gone through the entire system and has to be in the hands

of the election officials.

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Honor before election.

It's rich coming from a party that is banning drop boxes, as I mentioned earlier, because

drop boxes are way that you can put your ballot in at 4 a.m. or 5 a.m. or 7 a.m. or 10

a.m. or even 1 p.m. and it gets picked up the same day by the election office, but they

don't want that.

They want there to be disenfranchisement and they want there to be disenfranchisement

because they believe that more Democrats vote by mail, which is true, and they believe

that more ballots will be rejected as late received by voters who tend to vote Democratic.

And that is also borne out by the data.

So a lot of people say, well, won't this backfire on the Republicans?

Republicans don't think so and they are probably right because, in fact, the populations

least well served by the U.S. Postal Service, shocker tend to be young voters, tend to be

minority voters, more transient populations, and even now very older voters, all of which

tends to vote Democratic.

Republicans have been trying to block this practice, and my law firm and I, we've been

suing them and we have been winning.

And every place they go to try to make this argument, they lose.

In fact, you may remember earlier this term, there was another case involving mail-in

voting, involving actually the same issue that went before the U.S. Supreme Court.

This was the BAST case.

Now, BAST is a Republican Congressman from Illinois, and he sued Illinois because they

allowed this practice, and they still do.

Now, his case went up to the Supreme Court on the question of whether or not he had standing

to bring this lawsuit, the Supreme Court said he did, and now it's back down at the

lower courts.

But what the Republican National Committee has been looking for is a case that they could

get to the Supreme Court on this issue on the merits.

In other words, force the Supreme Court to decide whether ballots postmarked by election

day count, or ballots postmarked by election day, or see it afterwards, don't.

And again, about half the states allowed them to be counted.

So if the Republican National Committee gets its way, you're going to have a lot of votes

thrown in the trash by voters who did everything right, and were victimized by slow mail service.

So they filed this lawsuit in Mississippi, which is in the 5th Circuit, one of the most

conservative circuits in the country, if not the most conservative circuit in the country.

To their great surprise, we won.

And by the way, when I say we, I mean we, like my law firm and I, we intervened in that

case, not that we didn't trust the RNC and the Mississippi Attorney General to be looking

out for the voters of Mississippi on this big issue.

My law firm, we represented vet voices and the Alliance for the entire Americans, and

we intervened in this case, in order to make sure that, you know, our voice was present

in the case, saying how important it is that these ballots be counted.

And to their credit, the Mississippi Attorney General has defended the state's law.

It was a curious journey because, of course, at any time, if the RNC actually had cared

about Mississippi, they could have just had the state of Mississippi change the law, right?

I mean, the legislature is Republican thrown through, the governor is Republican, they're

all pro-Trump.

And at an early point in the case, hilariously, it looked like that's what was going to

happen.

The law was going to get repealed.

And then I don't know what happened, maybe a phone call was made.

They don't include me on those phone calls.

But all of a sudden, at the last minute, it looks like the RNC sent the message, no, no,

no, no, no, don't change your law.

We actually want the lawsuit.

And like I said, we won.

We won at the trial court.

We won before a very conservative judge.

And then it went up to the fifth circuit and the fifth circuit reversed.

So the fifth circuit found that these ballots cannot be counted.

And that set the stage for what the RNC wanted, which was a vehicle that then got appealed

to the US Supreme Court.

And the Supreme Court took that case.

And that case will be heard next week in the US Supreme Court.

So it's case that, you know, earlier this year, I argued a case in the Supreme Court

in a campaign finance case, or so waiting for the outcome there.

My team has been very involved in the Louisiana case, the Kalei case that everybody keeps

waiting to come out.

That's the voting rights act case.

It will have big impact on voting, in particular, redistricting.

But this case, the Watson case is actually the most important case of the term for just

like the 2026 elections, right?

Like if you're worried about like the outcome of 2026, you want to be paying attention to

the Watson case because it directly impacts mail-in voting and could potentially, and

very likely, have impact in 2026.

That is, if we lose.

But I don't think we're going to lose.

I think we're going to win.

And here's why.

The entire argument that the Republican National Committee boils down to one federal law.

Yeah, it's the election day statute that sets the Tuesday following the first Monday

in November as the day for federal election.

Okay, that's it.

That's the entire legal argument.

This entire thing is going up to the US Supreme Court.

US dollars are being spent by the Republicans to litigate this.

And it really all boils down to whether or not the law that sets election day as the

Tuesday following the first Monday in November, whether that means that the ballots have to

be in by election day or they have to be cast by election day.

Our position is have to be cast by election day.

The RNC's position is they have to be received by election day.

I'm pretty sure we're right.

Okay.

You can go back and look at the history of this and what states and the federal government

were doing at the time that this very old law was first enacted.

You can go back and look at the purpose of this law.

You can look more recently at other congressional enactments where Congress has built on that

law to, for example, provide for uniform rules for overseas and military voters.

You can look at what the state practices is.

Like I said, lots and lots of states have relied on the flexibility to do this.

So I think however you slice it, we probably win.

The most clean way for us to win, the clearest reason we should win is because just the

plain text, right?

It doesn't say that ballots have to be received by that.

It just says that that's the uniform election day and elections are not the day that ballots

are necessarily fully counted.

I mean, the RNC would like that and I'll be back to that in a moment.

It's the day that the ballots are cast, right?

So as long as the ballot is out of the possession of the voter on election day, then it seems

to be pretty self evident that we're all in good shape and the ballots should count.

What's really at stake here is not just these ballots that come in after election day.

Yes, that is important.

That will be tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of ballots in the 2026 election.

Okay, this is not a handful.

When we talk nationwide, we're talking about a lot, a lot of votes.

And again, the Republicans believe these disproportionately Democrats and Donald Trump is doing

everything he can right now to try to disenfranchise Democrats.

And this case is a part of that.

I mean, they'd love to get the say back past, don't get me wrong.

They'd love to ban mail-in voting entirely, don't get me wrong.

But this is kind of another way to chip away at the voting rights of people who vote by

mail.

And if you are not keeping abreast of all of the different ways Republicans are doing that,

then actually you don't have the full picture because it's a lot of different ways they're

trying to chip away at this.

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Okay, so I said, this is not just about mail-in voting.

What did I mean by that?

Well, if Republicans are right, and the uniform election day statute means that the elections

can only happen on election day, aren't they next going to argue that ballots received

by election day but haven't yet been fully counted?

Have to be thrown out.

Right?

I mean, after all, like, where's the distinction that they're going to draw?

I mean, I know I wouldn't say that, but if you're the Republicans, right?

How many times did we, you know, see Republicans on election, I say, stop the count, right?

Remember Donald Trump with the blue wave and he says there are these dumps of ballots

in the middle of the night, right?

There's nothing Donald Trump wants more than to say no ballot that has not been counted

by midnight can be counted at all.

So that's not this case, but it's not not this case in the sense that Republicans are

going to make that argument in the next case or the case after if they win this one.

What else?

What about early voting?

I mean, after all, I mean, the Republicans will argue in the future.

If election day means the Tuesday following the first Monday in November, then certainly

it doesn't mean early voting.

Just look at what Republicans are saying.

Look at what their activists are saying.

Look at what people in this department of justice are saying about election day.

Donald Trump says they want voting to only be in person on one day.

They want all the ballots to be counted on that one day.

That's their goal.

This case is just the first piece of that goal.

It's the way that they gained some momentum in an area where, frankly, they've gotten their

ass kicked every single time.

I mean, I don't have to repeat to you my record against Republicans in court on issues involving

voting.

I don't always win, but I usually win.

And they usually wind up with their tail between their leg embarrassed and being yelled at

by Steve Bannon and right-wing commentators about why they don't have a mark alliance,

why their lawyers suck.

It's not that they don't have a lawyer who's good.

They got plenty of lawyers.

They just got terrible legal theories.

And that's because Donald Trump is driving their legal theories.

Donald Trump decrees one day that you shouldn't have this and you shouldn't have that.

And then everybody scurries around and tries to make it true, even though it's not true.

So they're searching for a win.

And this is what they're hoping will be the first domino.

If they can block this, then they have started to gain some momentum.

I mean, it's the reason why it is so important that we pay attention to this case.

And it is so important we pay attention to the save act.

It's honestly so important why you strive to democracy not get and follow the cases

they are tracking.

I mean, they're tracking more than 160 cases right now in every state in the country.

And by the way, that's not even including the 50 redistricting cases.

Yeah, 50 redistricting cases.

We are in the middle of a decade, like smack dab in the middle.

And there are 50 redistricting cases.

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All right.

So at the beginning of this episode, I told you that maybe all of this will change the

outcome of the 2000 election.

I mean, there's been a lot of inks spilled over the years about the butterfly ballot and

how maybe that cost algorithm or the election.

You know, the hanging chads, we also the images of the hanging chads, like maybe that

cost algorithm or the election, then there are like all of the issues of that race that

people focus on and say, well, maybe this hurt, maybe that hurt, whatever.

Well, I got to do one for you, ready?

So way back in 2000, right after the election, when everybody was trying to figure out what

the final tally was going to be, George Bush was winning by 537 votes.

Now that wound up being the margin, right?

So just keep that in mind.

Al Gore loses the presidential election because he loses Florida, the decisive swing state,

shows you how different things were back then than now.

And he loses Florida by 537 votes.

And George Bush is propelled to the White House as a result.

There are a lot of cases going on.

And one of those cases involved a legal challenge to just under 2500 mail-in ballots that had

come in from overseas voters after election day.

I mean, what are the odds, right?

These are ballots just like what we're talking about now in this Mississippi case.

These are ballots that were voted and cast before election day, but then took time to

arrive at the election offices in Florida.

And wouldn't you know it?

1575 of those ballots were for George Bush and 836 of those votes were for Al Gore.

According to the court that heard this case, quote, thus the overseas absentee votes received

after November 7th resulted in a net gain to Bush of 739 votes.

The certified difference between the candidates, as I told you at the beginning, was 537 votes.

As the court said, if those ballots were excluded, and I quote, the result would be that

Gore Lieberman would have an advantage over Bush Cheney of 202 votes.

That's right.

If you had excluded those ballots that had been cast before election day, but received

afterwards, Al Gore wins the election by 202 votes rather than by losing by 537 votes.

There then never is a Bush versus Gore case because there is never a recount initiated

by Gore.

I mean, maybe then there would have been like a Gore Bush case, and it would have been

curious to see if the conservative justice on the US Supreme Court would have called that

off the same way.

But that we don't know.

But what we do know for sure is that if the RNC's position today was the RNC's position

then, Al Gore would have been elected president.

And would have taken office on January 20th, 2001.

Now this is something more than just idle curiosity, right?

This is more than just like a smart lawyer like me pointing out to you all, isn't it interesting

that this would have affected a presidential election that happened 26 years ago?

No, I'm pointing this out because we put this in our brief.

Like we put this in our brief to the US Supreme Court and said, look, guys, this court seems

to fly spec that 2000 election pretty closely and call the whole lot of balls and strikes

for George Bush.

And though this issue never went up to the Supreme Court, this was resolved at the District

Court and then the 11th Circuit.

This was underpinning all of that.

Now the RNC, they respond to our brief.

They don't dispute the underlying facts, but they're sticking with their current legal

position.

In other words, they're all in for magna.

And if the victim of that is George Bush's 2000 election, they're willing to live with

that.

If hypocrisy is the price they pay for their current position, sign them up for hypocrisy,

right?

They're unbounded by any concern about the fact that they literally won a presidential

election based on the opposite theory of what they're arguing now.

They are all in for disenfranchising voters today and whatever that means to the past

means to the past.

The Department of Justice, who is also on the other side, also against us in this, right?

Because I mean, would it be any other way?

I mean, would you expect that the Department of Justice might take an independent look at

whether or not disenfranchising tens or hundreds of thousands of American citizens, whether

that's like good or not, do you expect them to independently read the law?

No.

They're just doing Donald Trump's bidding the same way the RNC is.

You might as well just have two RNCs.

We got the RNC out in Capitol Hill.

I think they're building it.

Then we got the RNC downtown with the big banner of Donald Trump hanging on Constitution

having you.

The Department of Justice is not independent.

This is your general's office not independent.

They just do the bidding of Donald Trump.

They just do whatever Donald Trump wants.

That's why the Department of Justice is suing 30 states right now.

Try to access your sensitive voter information.

To be clear, they want to access your sensitive voter information in 50 states.

But there are 30 states that are fighting back and in all 30 of those states, my law firm

and I are fighting alongside voters to make sure that your information is protected.

But here's the thing.

The Department of Justice, even here.

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All right.

I'm glad we had this little chat.

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Sort of tried to finesse it.

So they've already just in nutshell, saying this, they agree with the RNC when it comes

to everybody about military voters.

So they would say, well, look, yes, you know, election day is election day, no ballot comes

in afterwards, can count if it is cast domestically, but if it's cast by military folks, then they

do count.

And then we are in the postmark rule world.

If that doesn't make any sense to you, it is because it does not make any sense.

They've just decided that because Donald Trump, remember, I said in the save act, he wants

to ban mail and voting except for people who are like out of town sick or in the military.

Like literally, they are just making this up as he is making it up.

So because he wants military voters to be able to vote by mail, they want military voters

to be able to vote by mail and have their ballots come in later than everybody else.

So I don't think this report is going to buy that, right?

I mean, like this is kind of like I buy an every one or the other, but, but that's where

the Department of Justice is.

So the RNC throw everyone's ballot out, the Department of Justice throw out everybody's

ballot, but the US militaries, and that's where they line up.

This fight is going to be going on for a while.

It's not going to end with this court case.

I mean, this court case is a big one and is important that we win.

And those of us in the pro-democracy movement are paying really close attention to it.

Lord knows I am because we are in this case.

And, you know, this is as important a case as any of the others for the future of free

and fair elections.

Like, like I'm paying close attention, but, but you should be too because when you get

behind all of the hypocrisy and all of the cynicism and all of the, you know, efforts

by Donald Trump to try to, you know, rig the elections and steal the elections and change

the rules and put Republicans in charge of the vote counting.

These are the kinds of changes, these small things like where do you cut off people being

able to return a ballot and have a count?

These are the things that decide really close elections.

And the 2026 elections are going to be close.

Like any one who thinks that this is just going to be a walk in the park, you are wrong.

And anyone who thinks it's totally rigged and then we don't have any chance, you're wrong

too.

Either, either side there, like go find some other YouTube channel, go find some other

podcasts.

I'm not your guy.

Like, we are in the fight because we can win this, but only if we fight hard, only if

every single day we are willing to take it to the other side.

And so, look, they come after me all the time and like, I, you know, it's not going to

slow me down.

And as you can tell, since I'm talking about all these court cases that I'm involved

in, my law firms involved in, you know, you know, there are going to be people fighting.

But you have a role in this.

You have a role in educating the people around you about what the Republicans are doing.

Because they are right now trying to steal your rights in Congress.

They are right now.

I just told you trying to steal your rights in court.

And Lord knows Donald Trump is going to use executive orders and the power of, you know,

paramilitary forces and ice and, and, and, you know, DOJ, like, he's going to use every

tool available to executive branch.

And Congress, the best we can hope for Congress right now is that they do nothing.

Yeah, when the Republicans threaten that if the Senate doesn't pass the save act, they'll

stop passing bills.

I keep thinking like, well, okay, like it's a Republican House, a Republican Senate,

like, okay, don't pass any bills.

But any of it, they are fully in alignment in fighting against your rights to vote.

And as you saw by what I said about the 2000 election, there is no amount of hypocrisy

that is going to stop them.

This is an administration without shame.

This is a movement without shame.

They will do and say anything in order to hold power.

So what I need you to do is I need you to start by sharing this episode with your friends

and your family.

They need to be aware that this court case is going on.

They need to know what, where the battle lines are being drawn, and they're not just

being drawn in Congress.

They're being drawn in court.

So do me a favor and share this video.

Also, leave me a comment.

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So look, I'm all about this court case.

This watch in VR and say, like I said, you know, me and my lover were in the thick of it.

But I need you all to be paying attention to it too.

And once we hear what they have to say, and certainly once we get a decision, I'll be

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Thanks.

I'll see you next time.